Tender Fire
by The Silent Rain
Summary: One wild summer night in France, seventeen-year-olds Lily Evans and James Potter meet for the first time and share a kiss. Both under the impression that the other is a Muggle, they never expect to meet again. So what happens when Lily, a Beauxbatons student, transfers into Hogwarts and they find each other again?
1. Chapter 1

TENDER FIRE

Chapter One: The World I Know

**Disclaimer: I do not own Harry Potter.**

_You show up like a hurricane, all hungry-eyed and weather-stained.  
The clock forgets to tick and I the same.  
_

_-A Fine Frenzy_

* * *

Somewhere in the south of France in late August, a group of bikini-clad young women gathered on a beach. The ocean crashed behind them as the sun began to set, and their girlish shouts rose over the sound of the waves. At the center of all of this feminine attention was a gorgeous girl with red hair, prominent among the blonde and brown heads, her locks wavy from the seawater and shining in the gentle maritime wind blowing off the water. She was smiling as she and her friends chattered away in French.

No one around them knew it, but these gorgeous young ladies, looking like they just came out of a glossy beauty magazine, were witches.

"Oh Lily, _ma ch__é__rie, _I cannot believe you're not staying at Beauxbatons for your seventh year!" pouted a tall, slender girl with platinum blonde hair. "It simply will not be the same without you!"

"You'll get on without me, Céline," Lily Evans grinned at her model-like best friend. "Although I'm worried that those silly British boys in Hogwarts might think I'm easy because of where I'm from. They have these jokes about French _prostitutes,_ you know."

"Ha!" Céline snorted. "We French girls are far too classy for the likes of them. I don't know how you plan on dealing with them for an entire year!"

Lily Evans was a witch. She was born to Muggle parents with an extraordinary gift for magic. She had moved to Paris when she was eight years old for her father's new job. He and his wife were fluent in French, but his daughters, Lily and Petunia, could only speak broken fragments of it. The sisters were bullied by their snooty peers who looked down on them for their poor French and English mannerisms, and they were rejected. Even when they achieved fluency, their classmates still viewed them as outcasts.

Just when she was wondering if she would ever be accepted in France, she received a letter, delivered by an elegant dove, from the Beauxbatons Academy of Magic in Marseilles. Her parents were overjoyed by the discovery of their daughter's true talent, and she was enrolled immediately and given everything she needed to study magic.

It was during her first year at Beauxbatons, all those years ago, that she finally found a place, helped out by her first friend, Céline Girard. Not only that, she was _popular. _The students at Beauxbatons accepted her as their equal and did not even notice that French was her second language until she told them; she had managed to learn French completely and to speak like a true _Parisienne._ Now, after all of her years spent in France, she was finally returning to Britain for yet another one of her father's job transfers.

"You're forgetting that I'm a Brit," Lily giggled, lightly smacking her best friend's arm.

"Yes, but you're French now," Céline declared with a dismissive wave of her thin, pale hand. "You've lived in Paris for over half of your life. You're one of us."

A petite brunette piped up, "Promise to get us some handsome English lads, Lily? I'm sick of the Beauxbatons boys. They're all so _droll._"

"I promise, but I can't guarantee they're any good, Elise," Lily chortled.

"All I want is tall, dark, and handsome," Elise sighed. "_And _a change of scenery. Are you sure I can't go to Britain _for _you?"

"Hogwarts is in _Scotland_, my dear," Céline said with a snort. "You'd freeze to death there before you can find any decent men in that country." She turned to Lily again. "Why do you even have to leave Beauxbatons anyway? It's a boarding school! You don't have to transfer out!"

Lily grimaced. She must have explained this to the blonde at least five times. "My parents want me to stay in the same country as them, remember? They don't want me going to school so far away from England."

Céline wrinkled her elegant French nose, tugging at her designer bikini top and dusting tiny grains of sand off of it. "Yes, but, that crazy man trying to take over the world, what is it that they call him…Voldemort…he's from England. Wouldn't you just be safer in France?"

"They say Hogwarts is the safest place in the world," Lily said dubiously. "I tried arguing with them about it, but it didn't work. Trust me, if there were anything I could do to stay at Beauxbatons, I would do it."

"Ah, _n'importe quoi_," Céline rolled her eyes. "A Wizarding war in the hands of the Brits means nothing to French ladies." Céline, though Lily's most loyal friend, could be vapid at times. She was part of one of France's wealthiest families and was the niece of the French Minister of Magic. Her entire life had been sheltered from the uglier parts of society, and she had been spoiled with presents of Louis Vuitton handbags and Dior high heels and extravagant perfumes. "You and I, however, have dinner reservations at _Le Jardin de Fleur _in less than an hour, _non_? If we don't get ready soon, we'll be late!"

"Oh, fine," Lily sighed. She hugged each girl goodbye, saving tearful Elise for last.

"We'll get together again later this week!" Lily called back to the girls as she walked away with Céline. She was leaving in three days' time, and next week would begin her seventh year, but at Hogwarts instead of Beauxbatons.

"We better, _Mademoiselle Evans_!" Elise shouted giddily through her tears. "We need to help you pack!"

Lily waved one last time as she and Céline walked towards the street. When they were out of sight from the rest of the girls still gathered on the beach, Céline looked at Lily and giggled.

"And now, the _real _fun begins." She grabbed the redhead's hand and together, they ran down the street in Cannes as the sun went down.

* * *

"Remind me again, Black, _why _we're in France."

"Because," came a muffled response from behind the bed. "You need to be here for your uncle's birthday party tomorrow night and _I _happen to like the gorgeous ladies that seem to hang out in this part of the bloody world."

A tall, muscular James Potter picked up the hotel TV remote and threw it as hard as he could at the tiny bit of Sirius Black's head that he could see from his seat on the room's chintz armchair.

_CRACK._

The sound of the impact was hard to miss.

"Ow! What the bloody _hell _was that for?" The dark-haired, slim boy crawled out from behind the bed, shaking his shaggy black hair out of his eyes as he held the back of his head, glaring at his best friend on the other side of the room.

"You think I wanted to come here for Uncle Chuck's birthday?" James sounded annoyed as he picked up a Quidditch magazine on the coffee table and buried his nose in it, pretending to read. Puddlemere United was going to be playing the Montrose Magpies next Tuesday in Liverpool. "I could have gotten out of it and we would've had the whole damn house to ourselves for three days if you didn't say you wanted to come."

"Oh, stop whining," Sirius muttered, still rubbing his head where the remote hit him. "Look at it this way. We'll get free food for all of tomorrow at the party, and we're going out tonight."

"_We_ are?" James grumbled. "_I_ want to go to sleep."

"Yes, _we_ are." Sirius said firmly. His dark grey eyes were excited. "As a matter of fact, it's about time we went out for dinner, as long as I don't have a _concussion._"

"Suck it up, Black."

"If we aren't going out for food, the least you can do is take me to the hospital! If I die, the blood will be on _your hands!_"

James leaned back in his chair, rolling his eyes, and tossed the magazine back onto the table. Ugh. He was in a bad mood that Sirius was certainly not helping to improve, and he had no desire to so much as get up out of the chair, let alone to go anywhere for dinner. "Can't we just order food from that room service thing that Muggles have?"

"_HELL NO!_" Sirius's tone was enough to get James moving. "That stuff tastes like burnt rubber mixed with Thestral crap and stir-fried in the piss of baby Hippogriffs!"

"Okay, okay, I don't know how you know all of that, but _fine._" James stood up, stretched, and ran a slightly-tanned hand through his already-messy hair. "So where do you have in mind?"

"A restaurant."

"Yes, what else would it have been, a dumpster?" James grumbled.

"You asked me, Prongs," Sirius shrugged, pulling on his shoes. "We're in _Cannes, _for Merlin's sake, there's got to be _something _around here."

"So what's your plan then, oh intelligent one?"

"Wander around until we find something?"

"Sounds good."

And within five minutes, the two seventeen-year-old boys were out the door, looking devilishly handsome. In less than a week, they would enter their seventh year at Hogwarts. Best friends since they were eleven, the duo were like brothers—inseparable.

Together they strode through the streets of Cannes, down the famous _Promenade de la Croisette, _dressed in tight-fitting black shirts and dark jeans, all of designer origins. They looked like the types of young men that mothers warned their daughters to stay away from.

As they strode down the avenue, Sirius shot James a sidelong glance. "So, Jamesie, you don't happen to know any French, do you?"

He winced, closing his vibrant hazel eyes for a second. "Not a lot, which is why I _wanted to stay home._"

"You're still complaining?" Sirius looked incredulous. "I dunno what's got your knickers in such a knot today. You, my man, need a drink."

"I thought we were getting foo—" Except James didn't finish his sentence as Sirius stopped dead in his tracks. "What is it, Padfoot?"

His eyes were locked on two girls, one blonde and one a redhead, walking towards them on the other side of the sidewalk, arms linked, laughing: both were unbelievably beautiful. They were slim, tall, and model-like, each with long, flowing hair in waves that made them look like living mermaids. The moment James caught sight of them as well, he was transfixed. The girls were gorgeous, happy, and talking to one another in rapid French. They couldn't be a day older than seventeen.

"I think I'm in love," Sirius breathed, unable to tear his gaze away from the two young women who were still strolling down the street. "Look at them. They're perfect."

"I'm starting to think France isn't so bad after all." James looked like he was about to start drooling.

The two boys waited, longing to get closer to the two, but they turned and entered a fancy-looking Muggle restaurant with casement windows opened all the way to allow the sea breeze in, with flowerboxes on the windowsills. Patrons were chatting quietly on the restaurant's pavilion, illuminated by moonlight and streetlamps, with more diners inside the attractive building. James squinted up at the restaurant's name on the sign above him.

_Le Jardin de Fleur._

"Did you say you were hungry, Padfoot?" James asked, his mouth slightly dry.

"Starved." Sirius grabbed James and together, they flew in after the girls, praying not to lose sight of them.

* * *

Lily and Céline walked into Le Jardin de Fleur, dressed like celebrities. Lily wore a close-fitting, black cocktail dress, a present from Céline by some French designer that she never heard of. Céline was in a similar, dark red dress, and they both wore black pumps that looked like they came straight off the runway. They had quickly cleaned up at one of Céline's many homes (this one by the beach), and immediately left for the restaurant.

"Good evening," Céline greeted the surly maître d'hôtel, a thirty-something man in vest and tie, coolly, in French. "I have a reservation for eight o'clock. The name is Girard."

"Girard…Girard…" the man riffled through the papers he had on his stand near the entrance. "Yes. Follow me." He picked up two menus and gestured for them to follow. Despite the restaurant's swankiness, it was loud and the atmosphere was youthful. They were seated at a small table near the window looking out onto the verandah, with a view of the water. As they sat down at the white-clothed table set with flutes of champagne, Lily couldn't help but notice two strikingly handsome young men eyeing them from the entrance. She made eye contact with the slightly taller one, with glowing hazel eyes behind wire-rimmed glasses. He had jet-black hair that stuck up ever-so-slightly in the back. As he smiled at her, she blushed a fair shade of pink for reasons she couldn't explain and looked down at her menu.

"So we'll start dinner with some French onion soup, _oui_?" Céline chirped, not noticing Lily's embarrassment. "This is the last time you can have some _real _French cuisine."

"Sounds delicious," Lily smiled weakly. She looked around her and saw the two men from the entrance walking towards them, led by the maître d'hôtel from before. "Uh, Céline…turn around."

"What is it?" She craned her head and caught sight of them. "Oh _my._" She turned back around to Lily. "Looks like we'll have some _very _handsome company with us tonight," she whispered across the table as the two boys were seated at the table adjacent to them.

Céline, always the flirt, sipped her champagne, watching the boys. She locked eyes with the shaggy-haired one and gave him her trademark smirk, flipping her hair over her shoulder. "_Bonsoir, monsieur,_" she said coyly, before Lily could stop her.

The boy slowly looked her up and down, taking in her close-fitting dress and shapely body, finally looking at her once more with a glint in his eye and replying, in English, "Hello there, beautiful."

Céline just raised a single, shapely eyebrow at him and didn't answer him, looking back to Lily. "_Ils sont Anglais,"_ she said lowly to her best friend. _They are British. _

Lily rolled her eyes and sipped some more champagne. "They're in love with you like always, Céline."

"Maybe that one is, but the boy with glasses keeps looking at you," she said excitedly.

"And?" Lily leaned back in her chair uninterestedly.

"We could have some fun with the pair of them tonight!" Céline looked thrilled at the idea, but Lily didn't seem to care. She continued on pleadingly. "Come on Lily, it's one of your last nights in France! It's summer! Let's have this last memory, please?"

_Well, _Lily thought, _what's there to lose?_

"Oh, fine," Lily grinned. "But I'm not _doing _anything with them, even though they're good-looking." She paused and noticed that the boys were still subtly watching them. Suddenly, she had an idea. "Let's mess with them for a little and pretend we don't speak English."

Céline had to clap a hand over her mouth to keep from laughing, almost dropping her wine glass. "Perfect."

Placing their orders for French onion soup, the pair glanced back at the boys next to them. The shaggy-haired boy had turned his chair so he faced the girls more, and when he noticed Céline looking at him, his smile widened.

"So, ladies, I'm Sirius Black, fresh off the plane from London," he said suavely, leaning towards them. "And this is my best friend, James Potter."

Lily's eyes widened. "No Eeenglish, _monsieur,_" she said with a heavy French accent. "_Français, s'il vous plaît._"

The two boys cringed visibly.

"Uh, _je Sirius Black,_" he began awkwardly in broken French, pointing at his chest. "_Vous?_"

Lily bit her tongue to keep from laughing at his horrible foreign language skills, but apparently Céline lacked her restraint. Her friend was practically falling out of her chair, giggling, clutching the table in glee. She was a spectacle.

"_Elle," _Lily pointed at Céline, "_s'appelle Céline. Je m'appelle_," she pointed to herself, "_Lily."_

Sirius looked to his hazel-eyed friend and muttered, though Lily could hear and thoroughly understand him, "James, help me out here."

The black-haired boy cleared his throat. "_Je m'appelle James Potter. Mon ami est un idiot._"

"We were wondering," Sirius said loudly and slowly. "If you girls…would like…to go out for drinks with us after dinner."

Now Lily was laughing too, and the boys looked so uncomfortable that she began to pity them, but it was Céline that spoke next.

"We'd love to," she replied in English, with an impeccable posh accent.

Sirius looked dumbfounded, but recovered quickly. "Oh, so you ladies were just making fun of us, weren't you?" He smirked and looked at Lily. "Well, _mon petit canard en sucre,_ we can play this game too."

Lily raised her eyebrows. "You said you don't speak French, right?"

"I don't. Why?"

"Because you just called her your 'little duck made of sugar,' Black," James spoke, for the second time. He shot Lily a charming smile. His features were perfectly molded. He was _god-like _in proportion. "Ignore him. He escaped from the mental ward last night. He's a threat to society."

"I did _not!_" Sirius whined. "Look at you, you're trying to make me look bad!"

"I'm just telling them the truth," James patted his arm in a mock-motherly way. "They have a right to know." He looked back to Lily and snickered. "File a restraining order before it's too late. Once, he tried climbing through his ex-girlfriend's window with a guitar so he could serenade her in the dead of night. She _screamed _so loudly that I heard her two blocks away."

"I thought we agreed to never talk about that again!" Sirius feigned woundedness. "It was a dark time in my life, Potter. She _broke _my _heart_! I was trying to prove a point," he frowned.

"And what point would _that _be?" Lily was amused.

"That I loved her!"

"She avoided him for two months," James informed Lily.

"Can you stop bloody telling people my personal matters? This is a sensitive part of my past!"

The girls' soup arrived as the playful banter next to her continued. _They're quite a pair..._

"So where did you girls learn English so well?" James asked, sipping his wine as the girls began their soup.

"Oh, it was a requirement at our school," Céline answered proudly. "They took language very seriously."

"Really?" James looked curious. "What school? Maybe I've heard of it."

"Uh…Beauregard Academy," Lily thought quickly. She couldn't say "Beauxbatons." The boys seemed to be Muggles, and she couldn't put Wizarding security at risk by telling them where she really went to school. "It's a…boarding school in Lyons."

The boys looked at one another and exchanged a look that Lily did not miss. "Never heard of it," James said slowly.

"Not a surprise," Céline interjected, giving Lily a grateful look. "It's a tiny school and most of France hasn't heard of it either. But the school has really high standards for learning and all that. It's a great place."

"We go to boarding school too, you know," Sirius said, rejoining the conversation as the waiter returned. He continued talking as the girls placed their orders of coq au vin and escargot, along with another bottle of champagne. "Way up in Scotland. It's bloody _freezing _up there. In the winter, we get about five feet of snow every _day._ But do we have to talk about this?" He changed the topic. "How about we take you lovely girls out for drinks later?"

Lily and Céline looked at each other.

"If you can give us a few good reasons why we should," Lily said nonchalantly.

"_Well,_" Sirius drawled. "For starters, we'll buy you whatever you want."

"And we're fun to drink with," James added.

"And we'll give you a night you'll never forget," Sirius finished with a seductive wink.

Céline snickered. "Convincing. All right, you have a deal."

The waiter returned with the champagne, opening it dramatically and pouring it into a new set of wine glasses for them.

"Pour some for them as well, _monsieur,_" Lily said in French, gesturing to James and Sirius.

The waiter did as she requested and set the glasses down on their table.

"Let's have a toast," Céline exclaimed. "To a night with the crazy British boys!"

"To a night with the crazy _French _girls!" Sirius countered with a playful glare.

"Crazy we may be, but you don't mind it," Lily shot back as they clinked glasses and sipped. These boys made her feel so at ease...

"I like crazy, don't you worry," James winked. "It works well on you, with that red hair you've got." He reached out and touched a lock of it, twirling it between his long fingers. "It fits that wild personality of yours."

"I don't think you can handle _my _level of crazy, Monsieur Potter," Lily replied flirtatiously.

"Try me."

* * *

The rest of dinner flew by, and after several glasses of wine, the group stepped out of the restaurant and into the breezy French street. It was almost midnight, and the avenue was livelier than ever with people enjoying the nightlife along the beach.

A slightly tipsy Lily linked arms with James. "So, my lovely English gentleman, where are we headed to?" She looked up at him, batting her thick eyelashes slightly.

"Oh, to a bar I passed on the way over here," he said casually, glancing down at her. She was _beautiful. _Her almond-shaped eyes, he noticed, were a perfect shade of bottle-green. They shone underneath the streetlights like glowing emeralds.

"I hope it isn't far," she mumbled, resting her head on his upper arm. "My feet are killing me _already._" She kicked her leg up. "It's these stupid heels. Céline made me wear them. She said they make me look like a warrior princess or something."

"Damn right, they do!" Céline called from behind them, where she was walking with Sirius. "I don't know what you're going to do without me when you go to Britain!"

"Britain?" James asked, brow furrowed in confusion.

"I'm moving to England for my father's new job," Lily supplied. "My parents don't want me going to boarding school overseas, so they're transferring me to a school there."

James was about to ask where she was going to go when he spotted the place he had passed earlier. _La Couronne._ The place was crowded, he could tell that much just by looking at it from the outside. It seemed popular, so the drinks must be all right.

"Here we go," He whispered to her, leading her inside.

The lights were dim and the music was loud. They were followed immediately by Sirius and Céline, who were laughing loudly about something James couldn't make out.

"So James, since you think you can handle my level of crazy," she smiled slyly. "I challenge _you _to a beer drinking contest."

He cocked an eyebrow. "I'm up for it, but to be honest, I'm not sure if a woman like you even stands a chance against my superior British drinking skills," he teased. "Men like me drink beer like normal people drink water, Frenchie."

"Oh, you're making this a thing about women now too, are you?" She stuck out her tongue at him like a child. "I bet I can drink a beer faster than you. I could beat you out _any day._"

"Well, if you're so sure, then who am I to refuse?" He raised his hands sarcastically. "I'll go right up to the bar and tell the man I'd like a couple beers, and if you lose, you're paying me back for these!"

"You'd make a fine French lady pay for your beer?" Lily pouted. "And here I thought you were a gentleman, _Sir Potter._"

"Well then, I'll change the terms of the bet. I lose, and I'll admit I was wrong and you'll forever have my respect." His eyes were darkened and sultry, and just looking at him sent shivers up and down her spine. "And if _you_ lose, you have to kiss me."

She gazed up at him and breathed, "Deal."

As he walked off to go get the beers, Céline sauntered over to Lily. "You're an idiot, darling."

"Tell me something I don't know."

"You're a _complete _idiot."

Sirius came up behind Céline and slinked his arms around her waist. "And now, I'm getting this young lady a drink," he announced. Céline giggled like mad as he led her off towards the bar, where James had just disappeared. Lily sat down at a vacant table nearby, and in a few moments, James returned with two already-opened bottles of some British beer.

"My favorite brand," he declared, passing her a bottle. "When Sirius gets back, we're having him judge this."

"And Céline too!" Lily retorted. "You'd have Black just say that you finished first so you could win!"

"True," James acquiesced. "Even though we're best friends, he'd probably want revenge on me anyway for embarrassing him so much at dinner. But I have to tell you, he does all this crap but _still_ manages to successfully woo every girl he meets. Once he drunkenly danced around my house with a lampshade on his head, and my mum walked in. It was _horrible._"

"I can imagine," she laughed. "Céline did something like that once too, except that time it was in our dormitory at school. She was singing this godawful pop song at the top of her lungs and our whole floor heard her because it was the middle of the night, and we got detention for a week."

James was incredibly easy for her to talk to, she realized. She was already comfortable with him, as though she had known him for years. And he was so debonair, dressed in black…

Sirius and a tipsy Céline came back to their table, the latter clutching a martini glass and bubbling with laughter.

"We need the two of you to judge who wins this drinking contest," Lily informed them. "And _be honest, _Sirius."

"_Honest_? Of course I'll be honest!" Sirius exclaimed indignantly. "On the count of three. One…two…THREE!"

The two picked up their beers and drank. Lily wasn't even halfway done when she heard a triumphant James slam his bottle back down on the table after about eight seconds and proudly proclaim, "DONE!"

She put hers down on the table. "Are you serious?"

"Completely," he beamed. "I told you not to mess with me. Now," he looked at her leerily. "You have a bet to make good on."

"That I do," she responded, throwing back the rest of her beer. She made no move to act on his words. "In a little, I will. For now, Céline and I are going back up to the bar." Grabbing her best friend, they strolled away once more.

"What did you bet?" Sirius inquired once the girls were out of sight.

"If she lost, she'd kiss me," James answered almost morosely, looking after Lily, though he could not see her.

"There's no way she's going to do it, Prongs," he said bluntly.

"I can hope, though."

* * *

After about an hour of dancing and more drinking, it was almost two and the bar was about to close. The stars were high in the sky and scintillated like they were fueled by magic.

"It's time we leave," Céline mumbled, still slightly drunk. "My mother's probably asleep and I've no idea if my damn house is unlocked, Lily."

"We could crash on the porch," Lily snorted.

"Do you girls want us to walk you home?" James asked concernedly. "It's late."

"We'll be fine," Céline yawned. "Don't you worry about us." She hugged Sirius and James. "Thank you for everything. This was the most fun I had in a while."

"Our pleasure, _mademoiselle,_" Sirius bowed deeply. "Perhaps one day, our fates will meet again."

"Perhaps they will," Lily said facetiously. "Or perhaps you'll just stalk us down like you did with the guitar and that girl you dated."

"I despise you."

She just smiled and hugged him. "It was great to meet you." She turned to James and saw a longing look in his eyes. She hugged him as well, and when his arms went around her, he leaned down and whispered to her.

"Will I ever see you again?"

"I don't know, James," she whispered back. "But thank you. You're a great guy."

He let go of her and stared. "By the way," he said. "You're beautiful."

The corners of her mouth twitched upwards. "Thank you."

"Come on, Lily!" Céline tugged at her arm impatiently. "We have to go!"

She sighed. "Bye Sirius. Bye, James."

"Well, I gotta go take a leak," Sirius announced. "But I have a feeling we'll meet again." With that last dramatic proclamation, he stumped off to the bathroom.

Céline hauled Lily to the door and as they walked out, she looked back one more time to see James still watching, looking sad. She raised her hand and waved goodbye as the door closed behind them and they stepped into the world outside.

The two girls were halfway down the street when Lily paused. "I forgot to do something, Céline," she said abruptly. "I'll be back in a minute."

"Where are you—"

"I'll be back!" she shouted over her shoulder. She raced back into the bar and threw open the door. James was still standing where she had left him, waiting for Sirius to come out of the bathroom.

"Hey," she said, walking towards him.

"Yes?" he asked, looking at her intently.

"I forgot to do something."

She wrapped her arms around his neck and kissed him deeply. Maybe she did it because she was still tipsy. But there was something in her that wanted to do it. She might never see him again, and this would be it. At least she wouldn't forget him. He was the best going-away present she could have ever received.

When she broke the kiss a couple moments later, she looked into his hazel eyes for a moment, and glanced away.

"I have to go. Céline's waiting for me." She began to walk away, but he spoke.

"Wait."

James grabbed a napkin from the table and pulled a pen out of his pocket. He hastily scrawled something down on the back of the napkin and handed it to her.

_James H. Potter  
142 Cromwell Boulevard  
Gerrards Cross, Buckinghamshire  
England_

His address.

"Write me," he said, eyes piercing through her. "Maybe once you get to England and settle down, we can get together or something. Over a weekend while we're at school we could go out for coffee. I want to see you again, Lily."

"I will, James." She smiled at him one last time as she turned around and headed out the door. "I'll see you around."

Yet as the door slammed shut behind her a second time and she walked back down the street to where she had left Céline, she knew that she was never going to write him a single letter.

* * *

_A/N:_

_Hope you enjoyed it! This will be a fun story, I promise. Lily leaves for Hogwarts in the next chapter, and it'll pick up the pace quickly. There'll be a lot of Marauder and Lily antics to come and I'm so excited! Review, even if all you have to tell me is that you want a quick update. Reviews are a huge part of my motivation. Thanks for reading!_

_Love,  
The Silent Rain_


	2. Chapter 2

Chapter Two: A New Beginning

_I will crawl, there's things that are worth giving up, I know  
But I won't let this get me._

_-Something Corporate_

* * *

_August 31__st__._

"I can't believe this, Padfoot," James Potter sighed. "She's _never_ going to write." The tall, black-haired boy flopped, face down, onto his bed in his Buckinghamshire home and frowned into his pillow. Sirius Black was standing on the other side of the messy, boyish room, gazing at his reflection in James's mirror and adjusting his white button-down shirt. All he could think about was Lily Evans, the girl he met in France. He had only been there for a few days, for his Uncle Chuck's birthday party, but it was she that dominated his thoughts and his memories. He spent the whole of the party dazed, wondering where she could possibly be.

"It's been a week, James, stop whining." Sirius made a face at his handsome reflection, undoing the top two buttons of his shirt. "She might just be busy. Plus, if that Evans broad wrote you at all, she'd be better off strapping the letter to the back of a blind Flobberworm and making it swim from France to England than putting it through the bloody Muggle _post_." He turned from side to side, admiring his well-built physique. "How do you plan on making this work, anyway? You know, the, Lily's-a-Muggle-and-will-probably-have-a-mental-breakdown-when-she-finds-out-magic-is-real, thing."

James sighed, rolling over to stare at his ceiling. "Hell if I know. I just want to _hear _from her." His eyes glazed over as he thought back to the last moments he had spent with Lily Evans.

She had kissed him, and though she was tipsy and they barely knew each other, to James, it was perfect.

So maybe he was getting obsessed. Still, she was unlike any girl he had met before. Hell, even _seen _before. She was extraordinarily gorgeous and certainly wasn't afraid to challenge him.

"You need to calm down," Sirius said reasonably as he experimentally brushed his shaggy fringe from side to side. "You're burning yourself out, mate. She's just a girl. Half the population of the world is girls, and if she doesn't write you, then to hell with her."

"She's bloody _perfect, _Sirius. And she's out there, somewhere in the world, maybe thinking about me…"

"I only care if she's on a nude beach with her blonde friend."

James rolled his eyes and sat up, stretching. With Sirius, almost everything looped back to sex and naked girls. "You've got one hell of a one-track mind, Black."

"Me? _One-track mind?_" Sirius demanded indignantly. "Ha, _as if._ You're the one that hasn't shut up about the Evans girl for the past week. We leave for Hogwarts _tomorrow. _You're bloody _Head Boy!_ You've got more important things to worry about than her. You barely know her, Prongs!"

"Yeah, well, I'd like to change that," James muttered. For the first time since that fateful day one week prior, he had little desire to continue talking about Lily Evans, and shifted his gaze to his school trunk sitting in the corner of the room. The lid was left open and the inside of it was quite, quite empty, though clothes were lying all over the floor. He would be leaving for his seventh year of Hogwarts tomorrow and neither he nor Sirius had done any packing. The fact that he was Head Boy, a position of responsibility that he, as a prankster and rule-breaker, had not particularly wanted, did not help his increasing amounts of stress.

Pulling out his wand, James started levitating random articles of clothing and spontaneous sets of robes off of his floor and into his trunk. They crumpled into his luggage haphazardly as pairs of shoes flew in after them, crushing the expensive fabrics. After about a minute of wand-waving, James paused to look at the mess in his trunk. He considered it for a moment, and then sent several pairs of socks into the chaos.

"Er…d'you want to fold any of that, mate?" Sirius asked, sizing up the overflowing trunk cautiously as a balled up pair of socks rolled off the mountain of clothes.

"Not, particularly, no." James got up and walked over to his trunk, trying to clasp it shut over the disarray. Of course, it wouldn't close. He pushed it down repeatedly but it still bulged up by several inches.

Sirius walked over, finally leaving the mirror. "Here Prongs, lemme help." He examined the situation for a moment. "Okay, you stand on top to push it down and I'll clasp it. Got it?"

James hopped onto the lid of the ajar trunk and stood up. It still had inches to go before Sirius would even be able to close it. "Bloody hell," he muttered, and began to jump up and down repeatedly on his trunk. It began to drift closed slowly, and he started jumping more aggressively. "Close already, you stupid piece of crap! CLOSE!"

"Almost there!" Sirius called from below him.

With one last jump, the trunk finally shut. Sirius snapped the clasps before it could burst open once more, and James bounced down from the top of the trunk, high-fiving his best friend.

"That's some great bloody teamwork, Padfoot," James grinned. "Now time to do yours."

* * *

_September 1__st_

Lily Evans rose early. So early, in fact, that she was up in time for the English sunrise. As the sky began to glow a pale blue into red and gold, she rolled out of bed and stretched with a quiet yawn.

"Good morning, London," she muttered, staring out the window. She had only just moved to England a few days ago, and she had barely gotten a chance to look around her new home when she had to pack for Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry. Today was her first day. Her trunk was packed and she had laid out her robes the night before, but she could not kill her nervousness.

She grabbed the robes that lay draped over her desk chair and walked to the bathroom. The best cure for her tension, she decided, would be one long, hot shower.

She flipped on the bathroom light and took in her appearance. Red hair was everywhere and green eyes were bleary.

_Great, _she thought morosely. _First day of my new school, and it's a bad hair day._

She stepped into the shower, turning the water on. Not for the first time, thoughts of James Potter came to her mind.

Lily and Céline had sat up all night, talking about James. How they had kissed, how they had flirted the entire night. They had analyzed the situation from every possible perspective and came to the conclusion that, yes, James Potter had fallen head-over-heels for Lily over the course of a few hours. And he had asked her to write to him…

A tiny bit of guilt was eating at her heart; surely he was waiting for her to send him a letter. Hell, he was probably sitting next to his mailbox like a lost puppy. But she knew that it even if she did contact him, they would never be able to have a relationship, for she was a witch and he was…well…a Muggle. She would never be able to get off of Hogwarts's campus to see him, and she could never explain to him what school she went to or the places she visited with her magical friends.

But still. He was devilishly handsome and sweet and tall and debonair…

_Enough, _she told herself. _You don't have time to keep thinking about him. You have enough to worry about, like finding your way about a gigantic castle in Britain and making friends and…ugh._

Lily rested her head against the cold, white shower tiles and groaned.

* * *

Lily stepped into the kitchen half an hour later, hair dried and all traces of frizz gone, clad in her school uniform. She was surprised to see that the lights were already on and her mother was at the stove, humming to herself and cracking eggs into a frying pan.

"Hullo, Mum!" Lily chirped, pouring herself a cup of freshly-brewed coffee. "You're up early, aren't you?"

Her mother turned around and grinned. "You need a big breakfast, young lady. It's your first day of school!" She scooped scrambled eggs out of the pan and heaped them onto a plate in front of her daughter. "I'll make you some bacon and sausage links, too, since they're your favorite. Now, don't be nervous when you get there, and don't forget to watch out for those boys up there. I know at Beauxbatons the boys were very sweet and calm, but it's a whole new country and you haven't been here in years, and I'm worried they'll be rougher here—"

"It's okay, Mum," Lily interjected with a subtle roll of her eyes. Clearly, Mrs. Evans underestimated her daughter's ability to cope with the apparently horrifyingly-aggressive English boys that she seemed to think were part-Neanderthal. At the mention of the Brits, though, her mind flashed to James again. _Stop it, _she told herself sternly, though her pulse sped up at the memory of his melting hazel eyes. _This is getting ridiculous. _"I'm _sure _I can handle them. The worst that'll happen is I get buried under a massive snowdrift the size of the Eiffel Tower."

The terror on her mother's face clearly showed that she thought Lily was serious.

"_Kidding,_" Lily added quickly, before Mrs. Evans could say anything.

"You better be, young lady, or I will be very upset with you!"

"Sorry, Mum," Lily winced and started eating her eggs. "But there's so much snow there, it'll be a surprise if my fingers don't freeze off," she continued.

Mrs. Evans sighed as she tossed some bacon into the pan. "You'll survive the cold, dear, but there's no guarantee you won't choke to death from talking with food in your mouth."

Lily swallowed her eggs and sipped some of her black coffee. She never liked milk or sugar in her coffee; there was something about the taste of it that she couldn't bear to change, despite the bitterness of the hot drink. "Thanks," she said drily. "I'll remember that."

Footsteps approached down the hall as Lily's older sister entered the kitchen, clad in a horrid flamingo-pink nightgown with pineapples on them, her stringy blonde hair wrapped up in rollers.

"Cooking some bacon, Mum?" Petunia Evans asked, sauntering over to the stove where her mother stood. She ignored Lily's presence at the kitchen table, which did not surprise her. She had been jealous of Lily's magical abilities and as the years went by, they gradually grew more and more apart to a point where they barely spoke to one another.

"And some sausage, too," Mrs. Evans grinned. She looked at Petunia and beckoned her closer. In a whisper that Lily did not fail to hear, she said, "Talk to your sister. For God's sake, Petunia, she's leaving for school until Christmas in about four hours!"

Lily hummed Muggle Christmas songs to herself loudly as she poked at her eggs with her fork, very obviously pretending to not have heard the exchange.

Petunia groaned loudly and pointedly and turned to Lily. "Is that your uniform?"

"Yes, indeed it is."

"It's rather drab, isn't it?" Petunia noted, wrinkling her nose at Lily's black school robes. "Kind of plain. That blue silk outfit that the other place, Bo-Bo Academy or whatever, gave you looked better."

Lily didn't even bother to correct her sister. "I know, Tuney, but I haven't really got much of a choice. It's a school uniform, not a red-carpet cocktail dress."

Petunia huffed loudly and sat down at the other side of the table, saying nothing more to her sister and flipping open a Muggle gossip magazine that, ironically, _was _plastered with pictures of women in cocktail dresses.

"Bacon's done!" Mrs. Evans announced, seemingly oblivious to the mild tension between her two teenaged daughters as she brought the pan over to the table.

"Thanks, Mum," Lily heaped a pile of bacon onto her plate. Knowing it would annoy her prim, stuck-up older sister, she picked it up with her fingers and tipped her head back, dangling it into her mouth. "Mmphm," she said through a mouthful of bacon, with a sly grin on her face, watching her sister cringe. "It's delicious!"

Petunia watched in disgust as Lily wolfed down slice after slice of greasy bacon, dripping oil everywhere. "I'm going back to sleep. It's too early for me to watch my sister eat like a starving gorilla with mental deficiencies. Wake me up in two hours." With that, she flounced out of the room, magazine in hand.

* * *

A few hours later, with about a half hour to spare before the Hogwarts Express would depart, the entire Evans family pulled up in Mr. Evans's beat-up Chevrolet Impala to Kings Cross Station. Lily's extremely heavy school trunk was piled into the back of the car and her owl, Genevieve, in a cage on her lap, with a rather sullen-looking Petunia in the backseat next to her sister.

Parking the car, Lily and her parents (Petunia insisted on waiting in the car because she supposedly stubbed her toe on Lily's trunk earlier) entered Kings Cross Station. Several people stared at the bizarre redheaded girl in black robes carrying a trunk and an _owl _of all animals, and Lily started to wish she dressed in ordinary clothes and just changed into her robes on the train. When they reached Platforms 9 and 10, she kissed her parents goodbye, promising to write to them every week and, as directed on her letter from Hogwarts, strode through the solid brick wall into Platform 9 ¾.

She kept her eyes shut tight as she walked quickly to the wall, and when she heard bustling and shouts of teenagers and students around her, and she knew it must have worked.

Opening her eyes, Lily saw before her a scarlet steam engine with students running on and off, loading it with their school trunks and their belongings, and she grinned, despite her nervousness. She stood there, staring at the train in awe, with her trunk and owl standing next to her. Teenaged girls were already gossiping all around her about who snogged whom over the summer, and boys were shoving each other jokingly back and forth on the platform.

Lily could have watched the scene for hours as a fly on the wall, if she wasn't interrupted in her gazing by someone running through the barrier onto the platform and hitting her squarely in the back with their trunk, sending her flying to the ground. "What the _hell_—ouch!" she cried out, her hands scraping on the ground. Blood immediately began to blossom on her palms and pain shot through them like fire.

"Watch where you're standing," came the cold voice of an annoyed-looking, gangly young man with greasy black hair. As Lily stumbled up, dusting herself off, she noticed that while he was wearing the same black robes as she was, as dictated by the uniform, he wore a green and silver badge emblazoned with the image of a snake and the word _Slytherin _on it. Lily recognized that as his house name.

"Me, watch where I'm standing?" Lily demanded incredulously, wiping her bloody palms on her robes. "You just knocked me over!"

"You shouldn't be complaining about something that's completely your fault," the boy said arrogantly, glaring at Lily and crossing his arms. "You clearly aren't very _intelligent_ for standing right in the entrance to the platform."

Her temper immediately began to flare up. "And you clearly don't have much _respect, _insulting someone you have never met in your life," she snapped. "I'm sure your mother would be disgusted that she raised her son to be such a pig."

Another boy was approaching to flank the greasy-haired one. Their badges, too, pronounced that they were Slytherins.

"Something going on, Severus?" asked a slight, blond boy. His eyes were dark brown and freezing cold.

"Oh, no," the greasy boy who was apparently named Severus responded, his cold black eyes still fixed on a livid Lily. "Aside from the blatant _idiocy _from this girl here who is now blaming my _mother _and me for her own stupidity."

The boy laughed harshly. "His mother is a Pureblood," the blond said coldly. "What blood are you that you think you can insult his family?"

A handful of people on the platform were now turning to stare at the spectacle unfolding by the barrier as the two Slytherins faced Lily. She could easily tell now that they were Pureblood supremacists. She had known a few a Beauxbatons, but they never bothered her about her blood; clearly, things were different at Hogwarts. Lily had never been ashamed of her Muggle parentage, and she wasn't about to start now.

She straightened up proudly and looked the boy dead in the eye. Her voice was pure acid as she spoke. "I'm a Muggleborn, and I don't give a damn about bloodlines. Being a Pureblood certainly doesn't give people like you a backbone." _I can stand up for myself alone, but it takes two of them to try to properly insult me, _she thought derisively. She glanced at Severus and added, almost inaudibly, "_Nique ta mère." _It was the worst French curse she could think of, and this time, it happened to perfectly apply to the situation: fuck your mother. Apparently she hadn't said it quietly enough, however, because someone in the growing crowd around them gasped at the French expletives. Her hands were still stinging with pain as she dug her nails into her palms, clenching her fists.

"_Mudblood,_" the blond spat, his distaste for her apparent on his face as the crowd around them increased. "You don't deserve to stand in front of me."

"You, _on the other hand, _don't deserve to rot in Hell, because that would be too bloody good for you," she retorted, her right hand slipping into her pocket and wrapping around her wand.

Lily had plenty hexes she picked up at Beauxbatons that she would have liked to use on both of those horrible boys but before she could so much as pull out her wand, a mild voice came from behind her, "Is something going on here?"

Lily started at the voice and whirled around to face a tall, slim boy with sandy hair. He, like the two boys standing in front of her, wore a badge on his robes, but his was crimson and red, with the words, "Gryffindor Prefect" on it. His eyes, a light brown shade that ordinarily would have burned with warmth, were hardened to a steely coldness as he looked at the Slytherins.

They stared right back at him, hatred emblazoned on their faces, but the sandy-haired boy did not flinch.

"You shouldn't use that sort of language around here, Mulciber," the Gryffindor boy said to the blond conversationally, though his face was set like flint. "Especially not to ladies. You wouldn't want to get in trouble before classes even start, now, would you?"

"Go to hell, Lupin," Mulciber snarled. His manic eyes turned to Lily, and a sick, dark grin spread over his face. "And you. You better watch who you insult. One day, saying that might get you hurt…killed, even. And you won't always have a hero around to save you."

Green eyes wide, Lily couldn't control the slight shiver that ran down her spine at his last words as Mulciber and the boy named Severus both turned on their heels and walked away. Quickly, she forced the nervousness out of her face. "Thank you for getting rid of them," she said to the boy that had come to her rescue. "You didn't have to do it."

The sandy-haired boy grinned, the stoniness of his face shattering into warmth. "You're welcome. And it's quite all right, really. Someone's got to yell at them eventually." A twinkle came to his brown eyes. "I've never seen a girl stand up to them the way that you did. I have to say, I'm impressed, Miss…?"

"Evans," she said with a wide smile. "Lily Evans."

"Remus Lupin," he replied, shaking her hand. "And it's nice to meet someone that's got enough courage to tell them off like that. It's not something I see very often, from anyone." He paused and studied her face for a moment. "You know, I know most of the people at Hogwarts, but I don't think I've ever seen you before."

His eyes were intense, and once more, her thoughts were drawn back to the memory of a certain hazel-orbed boy and his gaze that seemed to look through her…

Yanking herself out of her memories before they could consume her, she spoke. "I'm transferring in from Beauxbatons for my seventh year," she supplied, slowly walking with Remus towards the train. "I actually am British and was born here, but I moved to France when I was a kid. Now I'm back in merry ol' England for my dad's transfer, and my parents don't like the idea of sending me to school overseas." The pair stopped by the stairs to get onto the train. Setting Genevieve's cage on the ground, Lily attempted to pick up her trunk to carry it up the stairs, but to little avail.

_Bloody trunk, _she grumbled in her head. _I_ knew _I shouldn't have packed all those stupid shoes and dresses that Céline told me to bring…_

She made it up one step and almost fell back down before a chuckling Remus took it from her.

"I can do it myself!" Lily protested weakly as Remus carried her unbelievably heavy trunk up the train steps.

"Really? It certainly didn't look like it from where I was standing," he said with a laugh. Lily followed him up the train steps, thanking him profusely and clutching her owl's cage. As she joined him in the train corridor, he peered at her again. "So, Beauxbatons, you say? You must be the first transfer student that Hogwarts has had in years. I'm in my seventh year, too, so when we get to the castle I'll see if I can give you a tour—"

"Oy, Lupin, you're blocking the corridor!" chimed an energetic, Irish-accented voice from behind Remus. "Move that arse of yours or I'll make you!" Lily stood on her toes and saw a petite girl with hair the exact hue of carrots glaring jokingly at the boy.

"My apologies, Marly," he said suavely, though there was a teasing look in his eyes. "I was merely having a chat with Hogwarts's newest transfer student, coming here from Beauxbatons."

"Transfer student?" The girl, with hair the exact hue of carrots, gawked around Remus at Lily. "Oh my _God,_" she exclaimed, her eyes going wide. "You're the girl from before! The one that was yelling at Snape and Mulciber!"

Lily winced a bit. Clearly, it must have been quite a scene and she was growing rather embarrassed. The girl probably thought she was insane. "Yes, that was me."

"Marlene McKinnon, meet Lily Evans," Remus edged out of the way slightly in the extremely cramped space so the two girls could see one another. "Lily Evans, meet Marlene McKinnon."

"_Enchantée," _Marlene smiled brightly at Lily. "As you Frenchies would say. And if Lupin here ever decides to get out of the way, I'd be bloody _honored _if you'd sit with me and my friend in our compartment."

"I'm moving, I'm moving," Remus put up his hands in surrender, descending the stairs back onto the platform. "Talk to you later, Evans, and I better see you in Gryffindor!" In a moment's flash, he was gone, disappearing into the crowd, and Lily was left standing alone in the train corridor with Marlene.

"I have so much respect for you for telling them off," Marlene babbled. "That was bloody _brilliant. _Everyone else is too scared that they'll get their minds jinxed out of them if they so much as look at those blokes the wrong way." She looked at Lily's things, still sitting in the corridor. "Do you want to come sit with me?"

Lily was relieved. It seemed that at least, even if those boys on the platform didn't like her, she had a friend in this crazy, bubbly ginger-haired girl. "I'd love to," she said, grinning.

Marlene led her down the corridor to the end of the train, and the two redheaded girls entered the compartment, where a round-faced, blonde girl was already sitting.

"Alice!" Marlene chirped, plopping down on the heavily-cushioned seat and waving for Lily to sit as well as the train started to move. "Lily, this is Alice Prewett; Alice, this is Lily Evans. She's from _Beauxbatons, _can you believe it? She's here for her seventh year, just like us! And" –she leaned in, as if telling some sort of secret—"she's the one that started shouting at those Slytherins on the platform."

Alice stared at Lily, her baby-blue eyes amazed. "That was you? It was really impressive." Her eyes clouded over with sudden concern. "Don't take what they said about you being a Muggleborn personally. They treat almost everyone like that, Muggleborn or not. They only want to hang out with Purebloods, but even then they think half of us are 'blood traitors' or some bollocks like that. Besides the Slytherins, none of the students here are that way."

Lily shrugged, glancing rather disinterestedly out the window. A black-haired boy with glasses slipping down his nose was running towards the rapidly-accelerating train with his trunk and owl, waving his arms manically like a windmill. He would have to literally jump onto the locomotive, or he would miss it. Something about him looked strangely familiar…

"There are rude people everywhere, I guess," she responded to Alice, tearing her gaze away from the boy outside and instead looking down at her palms, which were still seeping blood painfully. _Ouch, _she thought ruefully.

Alice and Marlene noticed Lily staring at her hands.

"Oh my _God_," Marlene gasped at the torn skin on the redhead's delicate hands. "Is that from falling on the platform?"

"Yeah," Lily winced, covering them up quickly, hoping not to draw too much attention to them. It was already too late. "I threw out my hands to break the fall and they got scraped on the ground."

"Let me see that," Alice grabbed Lily's wrists and whipped out her wand. "_Episkey._" The scrapes on her hands knitted themselves back together and in a moment, the blood was gone and her hands were left with no trace of the damage that had been inflicted on them. "All better!"

"Thanks," Lily grinned. Already, she could tell that she would like these girls. Even though her first day had gotten off to an awful start with the Slytherins, it was rapidly improving with the kind people she met. "I needed that."

"It's nothing," Alice said with a wave of her hand. Her face spread into a smile. "Now tell us _all _about Beauxbatons, and those _darling _French boys you have at that school…"

* * *

On the opposite end of the train, four boys sat in a compartment, completely silent. James had his head rested against the glass of the train compartment window and was staring out at the verdant scenery flashing by, and he could have been mistaken for dead if he didn't occasionally blink. Sirius and a blond boy with watery blue eyes, Peter Pettigrew, were playing Go Fish with Muggle playing cards, and Remus had his nose buried in the day's copy of _The Daily Prophet._ Bearing a moving photograph of a swarm of hideous fairy-like creatures, the sensationalist headline read, "Doxy Invasion in Dorset: Will the Magical World be Exposed to Muggles At Last?"

"Beat you again, Wormtail," Sirius broke the silence dully as he tossed the cards down onto the cushion next to him, looking bored. "Honestly, you're rubbish at this."

"I'm trying!" Peter squeaked. "I'm trying, but it's confusing!"

Sirius just rolled his eyes and leaned back, his shaggy black hair falling into his face and lightly grazing his eyelashes. "It's not confusing, you prat, you're just stupid."

Peter winced at the insult and said nothing as the silence immediately settled on the group again. It was uncharacteristic of the quartet, self-dubbed "the Marauders," to be so quiet on the way to school.

James picked his head up from the window for the first time in half an hour, since coming back from the Heads meeting with Remus. It had gone without any excitement; the Head Girl, a Ravenclaw student by the name of Emma Walsh, had taken over the entire meeting and run it without so much as acknowledging James's presence or authority alongside her. She had a loud, shrill voice and was terrifically annoying, with bad acne, thick spectacles like the bottoms of glass Coca-Cola bottles, and mousy brown hair that was always tied back in a very severe, tight braid that looked like it was yanking her hair out of her scalp. Her worst quality by far was her tendency to drown everyone around her in saliva whenever she spoke. With her in charge, it was going to be a long year.

He sat up and ran a hand through his thick, perennially-messy black hair, and peered around the compartment at his friends. Sirius was now spreading out on the cushion, lying down, and Peter was anxiously looking out through the glass door, probably waiting for the food trolley to come by so he could gorge himself on pumpkin pasties. Remus was still reading his newspaper, looking engrossed.

So far, his day had been terrible. He had overslept and almost missed the train, saved only by Sirius, who pulled him on, trunk and all, at the last second. The Emma Walsh situation had not improved his already bad mood, and worst of all, he never got a letter from Lily.

_That's it, _he decided firmly. _I'm done with that girl. Wherever she is, France, England, whatever, I don't care. _

But the twinge in his heart as he thought this told him otherwise.

"Did any of you hear about the transfer student?" Remus asked, breaking the silence.

James turned around curiously to face his best friend. "What transfer student?"

"There's a girl coming here from Beauxbatons," Remus said, folding up his newspaper and setting it down on the seat next to him. "She's a seventh- year like us."

This piqued James's interest. _Beauxbatons is in France, _he thought. _But it couldn't be...the odds that it's _her _are maybe one in five billion. _Even though moments before he had sworn to himself that he didn't care about Lily anymore, he couldn't help but wonder. "Have you met her, Moony?" he asked casually, crossing his fingers that he had.

"Actually, yes," Remus smirked. "She got in a fight with Snape and Mulciber on the platform and I intervened."

Sirius sat bolt upright and stared at Remus. "_That's _the transfer student?" he demanded incredulously. "You mean to say she got in an argument with Death Eaters on her _first day of school?_"

"That's her," Remus nodded. The train was beginning to slow down as they approached Hogsmeade Station, and the sky had faded from sunset into night.

James groaned. "I missed it. What happened?"

"I didn't _see_ it, but—" Peter began.

"Then we don't care," Sirius almost shouted over him. He took over Peter's story and turned to James. "She was standing by the entrance to the platform, by the brick wall and all that, and _Snivellus _hit her with his trolley and knocked her over. They started yelling at each other and Mulciber came over and called her a Mudblood."

"She told him that Hell was too good for him," Remus added with a snicker. "If I didn't break it up, they probably would have started dueling right there."

"What was her na—" James began, but Sirius cut him off.

"Was she hot up close?" Sirius asked Remus. "I was already on the train and only saw it from the window." His face darkened for a minute as he thought. "You know, I could have sworn she looked familiar. I think I've seen her somewhere, but I'm not really sure where."

"You probably banged her at some point in the last five years and forgot," Remus said with a roll of his eyes. "Understandable, since there's been so many victims. I'm sure you've lost count months ago."

"You didn't answer my queeestion!" Sirius sing-songed impatiently.

"She's pretty," Remus acknowledged. "Very pretty. Quite nice, too, you know. She's down on the other side of the train, sitting with McKinnon."

James tried again. "Remus, what was her—"

"If she ends up Gryffindor, maybe I'll give her a shot," Sirius mused, resting his sculpted face in his hand. "Or another, if I've done her already…"

James was ready to hit Sirius for interrupting him over and over, and was about to ask what the French girl's name was when the train stopped and Emma Walsh, the Head Girl, came banging on the compartment door.

"Hurry up, Potter!" she shouted belligerently through the glass, spraying it with spit. "We have to go lead the students off the train and get the first-years to Hagrid!" She glared at him on the other side of the door. "Get up!" All the boys cringed at the sound of her voice.

"Kill me now," James muttered to his friends. Feeling like he was walking towards his own death sentence, he got up and walked out of the compartment and down the corridor with Emma.

* * *

The ceiling of the Great Hall was shining with the glittering stars of the night sky outside as the students took their seats inside the voluminous hall. Headmaster Albus Dumbledore, his hair even whiter than it had been at the end of the last school year, was seated at the High Table in the front of the room, beaming at the students seated in front of him. Sirius, Remus, and Peter were already seated at the Gryffindor table when a disgruntled-looking James trudged over to them.

"She's bloody _insane,_" James groaned, sitting next to Sirius and resting his head down on the wooden table. "I swear, there's no way I'll make it through the year working with that crazy woman."

"Makes me glad I didn't get Head Boy," Remus said cynically, glancing at the Ravenclaw table where Emma sat, pompously showing off her badge to everyone that would look.

Before James could continue complaining about the girl, the doors to the Great Hall were thrown open and Professor McGonagall appeared at the entrance, leading in the first-years.

"Do you see the transfer girl?" Sirius asked excitedly. James craned his head and sat as straight as he could without jumping out of his seat.

"Nope. All midgets," James said morosely as the last of the first-years processed through the doors. "Where d'you think she is?"

Sirius shrugged. "In the back, I guess. Maybe they're saving her for last."

The Sorting Hat, sitting on a chair in the front of the room, opened its mouth and began its magical song, but Sirius and James didn't listen.

"You said you saw her from the train window, right?" James whispered to Sirius. "When she was arguing with the Slytherins."

"Yeah, I did," Sirius answered, shooting James a curious look. "Why?"

"What did she look like?"

"Red hair. Kind of tall, I think." He saw James's expression change and he immediately knew why. "Blimey, Prongs," he said incredulously, looking at James like he sprouted another nose. "You don't actually think it's Evans, do you? She's a bloody _Muggle. _I hate to be the one that had to break it to you, James, but there is no chance that it's her."

Remus glared at them from across the table. "Will you two _please _be quiet?"

"Oh, trying to listen to the pretty music, Moony?" Sirius asked sarcastically. "I'm quite sorry for being such a distraction, do carry on."

Remus just rolled his eyes and turned back to face the Sorting Hat.

"Excuse me," Caradoc Dearborn, a fifth-year boy with light brown hair, whispered to James and Sirius. "Were you talking about the Beauxbatons girl?"

"Yeah," James responded, looking at the curious boy suspiciously. "Why?"

"Is it true that she punched Severus Snape in the face?" he asked excitedly, his voice rising in volume.

"Well, _I_ heard that she _tackled_ him," a sixth-year girl by the name of Annette Vane chimed in. "And then she did an absolutely _wicked _Bat-Bogey Hex on Cassian Mulciber. I mean, I didn't see it happen, but everyone in my compartment was talking about it."

"No, she definitely punched him," Caradoc insisted. "My friend was there and saw—"

"Do any of you know what her name was?" James interrupted, before the two younger students could start arguing.

"I heard it was Ivelisse," Annette began.

"_Genevieve_, actually," Caradoc glared.

"I'm sorry, but whoever you're getting your bloody information from is pretty much wrong about _everything—"_

"_I said to be quiet!"_ Remus was getting more and more annoyed. Annette and Caradoc fell silent and turned away from one another, but not before giving each other the dirtiest of looks. Sirius and James just exchanged martyred looks as the sorting of the first-years began.

"Anderson, Grace!" called Professor McGonagall.

"_RAVENCLAW!" _the Hat roared, and the table adjacent to the Gryffindor one, spread with blue and bronze, cheered loudly as the first student of the night was sorted into their house.

James knew that Sirius was probably right. The chances that Lily Evans was the transfer from Beauxbatons were minute. And while a tiny fragment of his soul hoped, beyond all hopes, that it was her, the larger part of him dreaded that possibility. If the new student really was the French girl that kissed him in the empty bar in Cannes, all it would prove was that she really _had _been ignoring him for the past week. He would no longer be able to pretend that she was simply busy, or caught up in moving to Britain.

The rest of the Sorting went without much excitement. Sirius had fun banging on the table whenever a student was sorted into Gryffindor and glaring stonily at the new Slytherins. Halfway through her list, Professor McGonagall paused and stared coldly at Sirius, saying absolutely nothing as the entire Hall fell dead silent. Peter found this to be astoundingly funny and went into a choked, uncontrollable fit of giggles for a good three minutes.

As the last student ("Yourell, Eric!") was sorted into Hufflepuff, Sirius leaned in and whispered excitedly to the rest of the Marauders, "You know, I think I've got a new record. I'm going to try to get detention from Minnie before the end of dinner."

James snickered and Peter had opened his mouth to issue some likely-idiotic comment when suddenly, Dumbledore stood up, and the whole room, which had just begun to chatter energetically, went quiet.

"To all the newly sorted first-years, welcome!" he said grandly, beaming at the students in front of him. "And to all of my returning students, welcome _back!_"

The whole hall began cheering, but after a moment, he raised a wizened hand and silence returned as hundreds of pairs of eyes stared at him expectantly. "We have one last student we need to sort. Perhaps some of you have already met her on the train to school. If you have not, I trust that you will get to know her over the school year."

"Transfer student, of course," Remus whispered.

"_Shhh!_" Sirius mocked his earlier behavior as Remus sent him a withering look.

"For the first time in twenty seven years," Dumbledore continued. "Hogwarts has a new transfer student coming here for her seventh year of schooling from _L'__Académie de Magie Beauxbâtons__._ I trust that all of you," –was it just James, or did he purposefully look at the Slytherin table when he said this?—"of all ages, will make her feel as if this place is her home."

"Oh, I'm sure I can do that _quite _well, better than any of those pansy _French _boys ever could," Sirius quipped quietly, smirking. James ignored him, his eyes fixed on Dumbledore in anticipation.

Dumbledore cleared his throat, and cried, "Please welcome Lily Evans!"

James's jaw dropped. He could not believe his eyes. The doors to the Great Hall were thrown open once more and, like a vision, the girl he had met not one week ago strode down the length of the hall, passing the Gryffindor table so close that he could smell her elegant perfume that probably came with her from France.

"Holy fucking _Merlin_," Sirius breathed, elbowing his best friend in the ribs. "Prongs, it's _her!_" James ignored him. The hazel-eyed boy did not for one second tear his eyes away from the auburn-haired dream in fear that she might be just that: a dream. As she sat on the stool in the front of the room and Professor McGonagall placed the Sorting Hat on her head, James couldn't help but pinch himself to make sure that this was truly reality. The Hat had only just slipped over her perfect eyes to touch the tip of her elegant nose when it shouted to the heavens in the sky-like ceiling above them, "_GRYFFINDOR!"_

The whole table erupted into cheers and yells as Lily walked towards them, smiling like she had just won the Muggle lottery. A few randy sixth-year boys stood up and wolf-whistled at her, making her blush. Normally, for a girl James liked, he would have gotten up and given them a piece of his mind, but as he watched her approach the table, he was so stunned that he couldn't even move himself to clap for her. Sirius was shouting something to him, but James could not absorb his words or even understand them. All he could do was stare.

"Lily! _LILY! _Down here!" Marlene McKinnon called from the far end of the table. Lily's smile widened (was it even possible?) as she spotted her new friend.

She took no notice of the Marauders as she sauntered down towards Marlene until Remus reached out and touched her arm when she passed. "Congratulations, Evans!" he shouted over the din.

She grinned at him when she saw him. "Thanks, Remus!" she yelled back.

As she pulled her gaze back to Marlene, who was sitting next to a very-ecstatic Alice, her eyes scanned the table. Her expression did not change until she caught sight of Sirius, and her eyes widened in disbelief as she took him in.

Then she saw James.

Their eyes met, like hazel fire against molten, emerald-hued marble. She stopped in her tracks and for a moment, the world paused around them and they just stared at each other, recognizing the other but being unable to process it. The look on Lily's face was unexplainable—was it confusion? Fear? Joy?—and as James struggled to pull his brain back into a properly functioning state, Marlene shouted from the other end of the table, "_HURRY UP, LILY!"_

Blinking her beautiful, wide eyes, she looked away from James and the moment was over. She ran to Marlene and Alice, who both embraced her like she was their long-lost sister.

"Bloody hell, mate," Sirius looked stunned. "Prongs, I…" But he couldn't find the words to finish his sentence, and fell silent.

As food magically appeared on the table in front of them, it was all James could do not to dry-heave onto his plate. Lily Evans, the impossibly stunning girl from France with her best friend in Cannes, was a witch. The girl who had so futilely tried to drink him under the table, who had kissed him tipsily and stolen his breath away and promised to write, was mere feet away from him.

And she had lied to him.

* * *

_A/N: Okay, so it took me longer than I intended to update. It took me a couple rewrites to be satisfied with it, and I hope you like it!_

_A couple notices: I would like to thank my IRL best friend, Mystical Topaz, for beta-ing this chapter for me, tearing it apart for several hours, and helping me make it actually interesting. She's amazing! Also, check out my (other) best friend, SkeletonCircus. She's hilarious and is working on a fic or two right now, so if you're interested, I suggest you go check her out!_

_Thank you for reading, and don't forget to review!_

_-The Silent Rain_


	3. Chapter 3

Chapter Three: Doubt

Did she make you cry?  
Make you break down?  
Shatter your illusions of love?  
Is it over now-do you know how?  
Pick up the pieces and go home.

-Fleetwood Mac

* * *

"I'm so glad you're in Gryffindor with us!" Marlene squealed, hugging Lily as she sat down next to her and Alice. "We're going to have so much _fun _this year, and we'll introduce you to _everyone, _we promise. You're going to have the greatest time of your _life_!"

Lily forced a smile, though her mind was in a haze. Trying to look at Marlene was like staring through a thundercloud. "Yeah," she said with as much enthusiasm as she could muster. "It's going to be amazing!"

She had found out, in the worst possible way, that James Potter was a wizard. James Potter, the boy she had met for mere hours in France one week before, was of magical blood, and a Hogwarts student in the same house as she. Though she had promised to write to him, she went back on her word. Now, seeing him suddenly in the Great Hall and meeting his pained eyes, it was apparent that she had hurt him far more than she had ever intended to.

"Lily, are you okay?" Alice looked at her new friend concernedly. Lily's smile had grown rather fixed and shock was starting to edge into her face.

"What?" Lily snapped out of her thoughts, blinking several times. Her eyes had glazed over while she was far away in her disturbed reverie. "Oh. I'm fine, yes." She reached out to the platter in the center of the table and skewered a piece of roast beef onto her plate rather violently with a silver serving fork. She dragged the smile back onto her face. "So, uh…who were those guys sitting with Remus Lupin?"

"What guys?" Marlene's brow furrowed as she craned her head over the fifteen or so people separating her from Remus and his friends. "Oh, you mean _them. _The Marauders."

"The Marauders?" Lily asked confusedly, following Marlene's gaze to where the boys were sitting. She saw the side of James's head and a strange feeling bubbled inside her stomach, like a mixture of fear, anxiety, and anticipation. She flicked her eyes back to Marlene quickly and willed the bizarre sensation to go away.

Marlene grinned. "I can't blame you for noticing them. They're simply _gorgeous,_ aren't they? Except for that Pettigrew bloke. The boy's nice and all, but I don't really understand how he ended up running with the likes of them. I mean, they're all absolutely _brilliant, _and he's rather boring."

"I don't think it was Peter that she wanted to know about, Marly," Alice interjected, giving Lily an apologetic look as she turned to her. "See, those boys had this little circle since we were all first-years. They nicknamed themselves _the Marauders _for whatever silly reasons that boys have for doing those things. They're all in Gryffindor with us. It's Remus Lupin, Peter Pettigrew, Sirius Black, and James Potter." She noticed Lily blanch slightly at the final name she listed. "Is something the matter?"

"Oh, no, nothing's wrong, go on," Lily said quickly, wiping the pained expression off of her face as quickly as it had struck her. She cut her chunk of roast beef as nonchalantly as possible, mentally begging Alice to continue.

"If you're sure…" Alice looked at her dubiously, but she went on. "They're the smartest boys in our year, even though I don't think I've ever seen one of them pick up a book and study, besides Lupin. They used to pull all these crazy pranks on people, especially the Slytherins. Most were harmless, but some of the things they would do were just _bullying_. They've mellowed out since then, though, now that Remus is Prefect and Potter's _Head Boy, _however the hell _that _happened—are you sure you're okay, Lily?"

Lily appeared to have choked on her roast beef. She sputtered as Marlene slapped her on the back, her face rapidly turning red. "I'm fine, sorry. Went down the wrong way," she muttered when she was finally capable of speaking again. "So, uh, you said Potter is Head Boy? And he's friends with…with Black?"

Alice looked very suspicious of Lily's behavior and exchanged a glance with Marlene. "Yes," she said slowly. "Do you know them already?"

"No, of course not," Lily replied hastily. She answered a little bit too quickly, as Alice raised her eyebrows at her questioningly. She cleared her throat awkwardly. "I mean, unless they went to Beauxbatons at some point, I don't think I've ever met them before in my life."

"Really? Because you're really acting strange about all this," Marlene said bluntly, looking intently at Lily. "If there's something going on, you can tell us. Did those boys bother you or something?" A knowing look crossed her face suddenly. "Oh _Merlin, _I think I know what it is." She turned to Alice. "I bet it's all Black."

Alice groaned and shook her head, choosing to say nothing and instead grabbing some string beans from a nearby platter.

"You didn't sleep with him, did you?" Marlene winced, and didn't wait for an answer. "Look, doll," she began, reaching out to pat a very confused Lily's hand comfortingly. "Sirius Black is _bad news. _He eats women like candy, and if you two had a fling or something, I want you to understand that the bloke is a _womanizer _and you should steer _very _clear of him because he is only, and I repeat, _only, _going to shatter your heart into bits and pieces—"

Lily couldn't help but giggle at the irony of the situation, despite her shock and confusion. The corners of her mouth twitching upwards ever-so-slightly, she said, "I didn't sleep with him, I promise."

"Oh, thank God," Alice looked relieved. "I really suggest you don't in the future, either. It's just a bad idea all around. He charms the pants off of girls, makes them fall in love with him, and walks away. I mean, I heard he's bloody amazing, but don't become one of his victims."

"As president of the I-Shagged-Sirius-Black-and-Regretted-It Club, I second that motion," Marlene snorted, stabbing at a potato on her plate and stuffing it into her mouth aggressively.

"He regretted it too, Marly, after you wrote a poem about it on the wall in the girls' toilets on the fourth floor and every girl in the school read it," Alice chortled.

"As far as I know, it's still there," Marlene snickered. Her eyes lit up suddenly and she turned to Lily eagerly. "You want to see it?"

"I'll be fine," Lily continued chewing her roast beef as calmly as she could. The food was delicious and was almost as good as her mother's home cooking, and it offered her some much-welcomed comfort`. "So what happened between you two?"

"Exactly what _always _happens when you get two horny teenagers alone in a dark Common Room over Christmas break," Marlene snorted through another mouthful of potatoes. "We shagged." Swallowing her food, she beamed widely. "And it was _great._"

For the first time since she saw James minutes before, Lily smiled. "I thought you just said that you regretted it!"

"Well, the actual shag itself was fantastic, but the aftermath was _awful," _Marlene conceded, making a face at her now-empty plate. "He should have told me that he didn't want me to write an ode to his sexual prowess on the wall."

"It wasn't just that, you also called him an arrogant, toad-eating, over-sexualized piece of dirt because he didn't offer to take you to Hogsmeade the next weekend." Alice winced at the memory. "Don't forget I had to go up to Remus and beg him to put a Restraining Charm on Black to keep him from strangling you."

"Oh, he wasn't _actually _going to hurt me," Marlene said dismissively. "He was too desperate to get some more—"

"No, actually, Marls, I'm pretty sure he was going to _murder _you." Alice's gaze flicked back to Lily, who looked mildly amused at the exchange, before they got too lost in discussion of Marlene's past flings. "So you're completely sure you're all right?"

"Yeah," Lily nodded a little painfully, but kept an almost-completely genuine smile on her face. The girls' humor had brightened her mood, at least a tiny bit. "It's just a lot for me to handle. New school, new country, a language I haven't spoken regularly in _years, _and then" –she grinned devilishly, her personality shining through at last— "handsome prankster boys in the same house as us."

"Now you're talking!" Marlene beamed, slinging an arm around her. "We'll give you a tour of the castle after the feast, how does that sound? You won't be nervous one bit when we're through with you, I promise."

* * *

"Prongs," Sirius was saying. "Prongs, listen to me, I know this is hard for you, but you've got to eat."

James was staring down at the ceramic plate in front of him, his eyes dark and moody behind his glasses that had been slowly sliding further and further down his nose. He did not seem to care and had not moved an inch in the past half hour, his gaze fixed intently on his empty plate as his friends wolfed down the food of the banquet laid out around them. Very little had been said since Lily made her appearance in the Great Hall, and it did not look like that would change.

"Come on, mate," Sirius heaved a slab of pork onto his plate. "You can't turn up this food. You know you want it. Just smell it, the delicious, aromatic wafts of—"

"Sirius, shut the _hell up_," James growled at last, his head finally snapping up and turning to face Sirius with such ferocity that Remus and Peter leaned back slightly. Sirius did not even flinch.

"It speaks!" Sirius threw his hands up in mock surprise, but he very clearly wasn't amused. He dumped a small mountain of mashed potatoes on his best friend's plate, so large that it covered most of the pork.

James just glared, saying nothing, though pushing his spectacles back up the bridge of his nose. He reached for his knife and fork and, wielding them both like weapons (in Sirius's direction) in a way that made Remus and Peter wince. He stabbed the pork as if it had done him some kind of grievous injury, and hacked at it viciously before stuffing it into his mouth and gulping it down with aggression.

Peter made a face and looked at Sirius. "_What happened?_" he mouthed. This did not escape James's notice.

"What do you mean, what happened?" James snapped bitterly. "I got lied to and I got led on. Not much more to it than that."

Peter faltered a bit and shrank back against the harshness of his friend's tone. "I understand if you don't want to talk about it, Prongs, but—"

"But what?" James stabbed another piece of pork with his knife. "It's not that complicated." His shock from the beginning of the feast had long since faded into anger. "I liked her more than she liked me, and she didn't even think to give me any type of _closure _about the whole damn thing." He stared at some of the platters that sat on the table before him. There was a duck confit dish in front of him, clearly with French origins, along with a meter-long baguette sliced into several smaller pieces. _Probably in Lily's honor, _he thought with a wince. _Of course. _He couldn't help but glance down the table at her subtly. She was sitting with Marlene and Alice, laughing at something they said.

Remus glanced at Sirius and shook his head slightly. He reached under the table and pulled a piece of parchment out of his pocket along with a magical quill. He scrawled something discreetly on the parchment while James continued to mangle his food, and slipped it to Sirius underneath the table. He subtly reached out to take it, and his eyes skimmed the words on the page.

_How does he know her? _It read.

_We went to Cannes for his uncle's birthday party, _Sirius wrote back hastily, eyeing James covertly, who had not noticed the note-passing taking place beside him, his gaze still fixed on his food. _Met her and her friend in a restaurant. Went to a bar together. He liked her, they kissed, and she promised to write but never did. He took it personally. The end. _

Sirius kicked Remus in the leg and stuffed the piece of parchment into his hand just as James looked up, still oblivious to the silent communication next to him. Peter was watching the entire exchange awkwardly from his spot at the edge of the group, his mouth opening as he tried to come up with something to say, and closing like a guppy's as he failed.

"So she's in our bloody _house, _too," James mumbled angrily to Sirius, forcing down some of the buttery mashed potatoes. "This entire year is going to _blow. _Why couldn't she just stay in her own damn school? Why the hell did she have to come _here?_" He did not notice Remus's brow furrowing as he read Sirius's response.

"I dunno, mate," Sirius said as comfortingly as he could. "But at least now you know she's a bitch, right? You're not really missing anything by not being with her."

James stiffened noticeably. "She's still absolutely beautiful," his voice dropped so low that it became almost a whisper. "I don't care if she's a _'bitch.'_ I still spent the last week of my summer wondering where she was, how she was doing, and whether or not she still wanted to talk to me, all because she was the most wonderful girl I'd met, even if I only knew her for a few hours. It was bloody _magic, _Padfoot. I wish you could've felt it."

Not for the first time that night, Sirius hardly had an idea what to say to his best friend, stricken by the unhappiness that was so uncharacteristic of James.

"Prongs," he said softly. "Come on, mate, maybe she had a reason for what she did. Maybe she's got something to say to you about the entire thing. You don't know for sure that she was just messing with you. Merlin, I was there with you that night. I think she liked you. I really think she did."

James shook his head imperceptibly. "You don't know that, Sirius." All traces of his earlier anger had faded into a type of depressed resignation. "Merlin, she's more than some ordinary girl. She was so beautiful and funny, hell, she was _sexy, _and you know what? The whole thing was just too damn good to be true."

"I'm sure if you went and said hello to her, it would go just fine," Remus said consolingly.

"No, actually, I don't think it would." James looked like he was going to be sick. By now, the feast was almost over, and students up and down the Gryffindor table were yawning and stretching, the newly-sorted first years looking exhausted, despite their lingering excitement at the castle. He stood up sharply, pushing the bench backwards against the stone floor with a grating noise. A few neighboring students stared at him curiously. "I need to go." He looked down at Remus, Sirius, and Peter. The concern etched on their faces, gazing up at him, left a pang in his stomach. "I'm going to bed early. Remus, can you lead everyone up to Gryffindor Tower for me later? The password's _Bouncing Bowtruckles._"

"Are you sure you don't want us to come with—" Remus started, but Sirius elbowed him in the stomach, hard.

"No," James muttered, adjusting his wire-rimmed glasses on the bridge of his nose. "Don't worry about me. I'm fine on my own. I'll see you tomorrow, okay?" He did not wait for a response, and hurried out of the Great Hall, through a discreet side door, and out of sight, hoping to Merlin that no one would notice him as he rushed away.

Remus, Sirius, and Peter were left sitting at the table. Very few students had noticed James's exit, and the din of the Great Hall continued at its full volume.

"He really liked her, didn't he?" Remus asked, looking grave. He was perturbed by James's behavior; he had never seen him so upset over a girl in his entire life.

"Yeah, she was all he'd talk about after he met her," Sirius muttered. He had suddenly lost his appetite, even as he stared at the pile of uneaten food on his plate. "We met her with her friend Céline in this restaurant in Cannes, and we all got talking and wound up going to a bar after dinner. He fell _hard _for her, mate," Sirius looked up at Remus and shook his head slightly. "I don't get how he can be so smitten with a girl he barely knows. I know he liked her a lot. You should have seen them together; it was like they had some kind of instant bond with each other. But still, it's not like him to be so upset like this all because some French broad didn't write him a bloody letter."

"Maybe he's just shocked," Remus mused. "She probably had a good reason for not writing to him."

"Yeah, but she just left him hanging like that! She didn't even give him any closure!" interjected Peter indignantly.

"But a week really isn't a long time," Remus said reasonably, glancing down the table to where Lily sat. She was engrossed in conversation with her friends, and she looked genuinely happy. "If he just _talked _to her about it, I'm sure things would be fine."

"She's had ample time to talk to him in the past hour," Sirius grumbled darkly. "And she obviously hasn't taken advantage of the chance to explain herself." He saw that Remus was opening his mouth to speak again, and continued before he could say anything. "Look, Moony, I hate to say this, but _you weren't there. _She acted like she really, really liked him, and he made it pretty damn clear that he did, too." Dumbledore stood up and the rest of the students stopped talking, hearkening to their headmaster's words as he instructed them about their schedules for their classes the next day. Sirius did not cease speaking, but instead dropped his voice to a whisper. "She promised to write to him. It wasn't like some kind of quick 'kiss-and-move-on' type of thing. She _ran back into the bar and ditched her best friend in the street _to come back and kiss him. She couldn't even have sent him a note saying she wasn't interested?"

Remus couldn't think of much to say in response to Sirius's words as Dumbledore dismissed the students from the Great Hall to their dormitories and benches scraped backwards against the stone floor. His best friend was right; he _hadn't _been there when the whole situation unfolded, and if the matter of Lily Evans was bothering James this much, when he could never even remember a time when the hazel-eyed boy was upset about a girl, then clearly something had to be done.

It was almost as if Sirius could read his mind, and the next words that the boy spoke as the students shuffled toward the large oak doors caused a shiver tension to emanate down his spine.

"That's it," Sirius said grimly, his stormy-grey eyes suddenly darkened with contained anger. "I'm going to go have a word with her."

Remus stared at him. "Padfoot, that's a terrible idea."

"Not to me, it isn't. That girl's got some explaining to do." He made his way out of the Great Hall with Remus hot on his heels and started to push his way through the crowd in hot pursuit of the girl with dark red hair who was slowly disappearing into the crowd flooding into the corridors and stairways.

"Sirius, I mean it, _don't do it—_Sirius, STOP!"

But it was too late, and the tall, slim boy was already out of sight, making his way towards Lily.

"Get out of my way, midgets," he grumbled, shoving a terrified-looking first-year girl to the side as he stalked towards Lily. "You kiddies need to learn some respect for authority."

Sirius was so close that he could hear her melodic voice, tinkling like bells over the din of the students that filled the corridors. He spotted Marlene and Alice at her side and rolled his eyes. _Now I'll have to contend with McKinnon, too, _he thought ruefully, but the thought of dealing with his old flame did not deter him from his quest as he continued forcing his way through the crowd.

"Evans!" he shouted through the crowd.

He saw her stiffen. Her shoulders tightened and for a split second, it looked like she was going to turn around, but she didn't. Instead, she picked up her pace ever-so-slightly, hurrying her gait with her two new friends. Sirius's lip curled, and he pushed past the remaining students between them to catch up with the girls ahead of him, he was directly behind them now, and he could tell that Lily knew it when he reached out and tapped her on the shoulder lightly.

Lily stopped dead in her tracks and whirled around and met his eyes with a look on her face reminiscent of a terrified doe, but the expression was fleeting and she quickly replaced it with the same hard, cold gaze she had given to Severus Snape on the platform that morning. Marlene and Alice had kept walking, pausing a several feet ahead of the two, once they realized that Lily was no longer beside them.

"Lily Evans," Sirius drawled slowly, a sardonic smirk spreading across his haughty face. "I've got to say, you look lovely."

He could see the fight-or-flight instinct building in her eyes, but in a moment, her decision was obvious. She stood exactly where she was as Marlene and Alice turned around curiously. "I'm not one to turn down a good compliment," she said coolly. "But am I supposed to know you?"

Ordinarily, Sirius would have been taken aback, even a little offended, by the coldness in her tone, but now, he just plowed on, the iciness hardly affecting him. "Yeah, as a matter of fact, you _are _supposed to know me," he snapped. "I didn't think you would forget what happened so quickly. I mean, _James _certainly hasn't."

"I don't know what you're talking about." Lily crossed her arms. Marlene and Alice were making their way through the throng of students back to Sirius and Lily, who were now having a stand-off in the middle of the corridor. A few students looked on curiously, watching the red-haired French girl in interest.

"Oh, don't play dumb," he barked. "In fact, you look almost as lovely as you did in _Cannes._" He saw Lily stiffen slightly, and he smirked in satisfaction. "Yeah, you and your little blonde French friend, Girard. Where is she, anyway? You two looked so attached at the damn _hip _that I would have thought she'd be here with you."

"She's in France," Lily replied, meeting his gaze, green eyes devoid of emotion.

"In _France, _or at _Beauxbatons_?"

"I have no idea what you're talking about," Lily repeated firmly.

"Oh yes, you do. I know you weren't _that _drunk that you forgot everything." His silvery-grey eyes glinted with borderline malice at the girl as she held her ground. "_Especially _the part where you kissed—"

"Hey Black, what do you think you're doing now?" Marlene shouted as she drew closer to the tense pair, Alice in tow. She did not appear to have heard what Sirius was saying when she interrupted him, and she fixed him with a dark smirk. "Already trying to chat up the new girl, are you?" She slung a protective arm around Lily. "I told her _all _about you, don't worry."

Sirius rolled his eyes, in spite of his anger. "McKinnon, leave."

"Why should I?" Marlene stamped her foot like a little girl. "You can't tell me what to do!"

"I will bloody _make you_ if you don't, that's why you should," Sirius's cold fury was rapidly being replaced with annoyance at Marlene's interruption. "Act your age for once."

"Oh, shut up," Marlene said irritably. "I thought that maybe you'd finally grow up over the summer, but it looks like I'm going to be disappoint—"

"Marly, calm down," Alice placed a placating hand on her best friend's shoulder. She smiled apologetically at Sirius. "Sorry Sirius, she's a little…fired up tonight."

But Sirius by now had looked away from Marlene, who was still fuming despite Alice's comfort, and focused his gaze back on Lily. She forced herself to stand at her full, rather intimidating height and stare back at him stonily. For the third time that day, every single student still in the corridor was watching Lily Evans.

"That's just fine by me, Prewett," Sirius said slowly, cold fury in his voice that made Lily stiffen even more. "But I have a conversation I need to finish with _Mademoiselle Evans _here."

Alice's attention flicked back and forth between Sirius and Lily, and if she was confused by the apparent animosity that they felt for one another, she did not show it. "No, you don't," she said firmly. Noticing quickly that almost everyone was staring at this point, she let go of Marlene and grabbed Lily's hand, squeezing it gently. "Come on, Lily," she whispered. "He's not worth it." She did not wait for her new friend to respond, and tugged her hand toward a nearby staircase, with Marlene at their side.

Lily let her two friends pull her away, but she kept her eyes on Sirius as she passed him. "_Autres temps, autres moeurs,_" she murmured to him, smiling cynically at the confusion on his handsome features. Other times, other customs, she had said; _times change._

* * *

Lily did not speak to either of her friends on the walk to Gryffindor Tower on the seventh floor. Her encounter moments before with Sirius Black had rattled her, and so far that day, she felt like she had made herself far more noticed than she had intended. In between being the new girl, arguing with two Slytherin boys, and being confronted by Sirius, it appeared that everyone in the school already had an impression of her, which made her feel extremely uncomfortable. Alice and Marlene had shot her several furtive glances in the past several minutes, but they had said nothing since they pulled her away from Sirius, and she was grateful for it.

To distract herself from her disconcerting thoughts, Lily busied herself, as she walked, in the decorations of Hogwarts. The stone walls were hung with tapestries bearing the school's coat of arms, and as they drew nearer to Gryffindor Tower, the wall hangings were increasingly gilt with red and gold, the house colors. The torches set in brackets on the walls flared, filling the corridor with light and warmth as the Gryffindor students climbed ever-higher up the stairs to their dormitories.

_This is nothing like Beauxbatons, _Lily thought admiringly. Beauxbatons was palatial, and had been clad entirely with pale blue, grey, and light gold hangings, with well-waxed, hardwood floors and vases of flowers on every corner.

"Lily…Lily!"

Marlene was tapping her on the arm repeatedly and was staring keenly at her face. Lily jumped a bit and turned to face her.

"You didn't hear me talking to you, did you?" Marlene asked, furrowing her brow. She did not wait for Lily's reply and plowed on. "I was asking, do you know what classes you're going to be in?"

"I've no idea," Lily winced as the hoard of students slowed. They were now standing in front of a large portrait of an immensely fat woman in a pale pink dress, who was staring at them with a chagrined expression. "In the letter I got over the summer, they said that they'll have me take a placement test first thing tomorrow morning to check my progress." There was a murmur of discontent emanating through the students in between them and the portrait. Confusedly, she asked, "And um…what exactly are we doing out here?"

"Waiting to get into Gryffindor Tower, apparently," Alice said drily. "The Common Room and house dormitories are on the other side of the portrait hole and we seem to be stuck out here because—"

"Does anyone know what the hell the password is?" Caradoc Dearborn shouted, annoyed, from the front of the crowd. His demand summed up the rest of Alice's interrupted statement. "Or are we all going to have to sleep in the bloody corridor tonight?"

"Excuse your language, young man," the portrait spoke sternly, turning her painted nose upwards. "You should not say such words when there are _ladies _present!"

Lily twitched when she heard the Fat Lady speak. She had grown accustomed to magical paintings when she first entered the Wizarding World, but the _talking _aspect still shocked her sometimes.

"Oh, shut up, you dumb broad," Caradoc muttered as he pushed his way through the crowd, away from the portrait. "Does anyone know where Potter is?" he called, his eyes scanning for the bespectacled young man who was nowhere to be found. "I thought our _Head Boy_ was supposed to be in charge of this!"

"That's James for you," Marlene snickered to Alice and Lily. "You can never find the bloke when you need him."

"He was getting better towards the end of last year, you know," Alice said reasonably. "He stopped hexing the living daylights out of everyone that got within fifteen feet of him, and you have to admit, that's always an improvement."

"And that means he's responsible enough to be Head Boy?" Marlene snorted. "If you ask me, it should have been Lupin all along."

Lily was listening to the conversation in rapt attention. _Hexing the daylights out of people?_ she wondered confusedly. _That doesn't sound much like the James Potter that _I _met…_

"Well, no, I guess it doesn't mean he's responsible," Alice began. "But—"

"Coming through!" yelled the familiar voice of Remus Lupin over the din of disgruntled students congregated in the hallway, spilling out into the moving staircases of stone. "Everyone, calm down! The password's _Bouncing Bowtruckles!_"

Upon Remus shout the password from the far end of the corridor, the Fat Lady sighed theatrically and swung open. A sigh of relief waved through the flock of students as they clamored eagerly through the passageway.

"Come on," Alice said excitedly. "You finally get to see where you're going to live for the rest of the year!" She grabbed Lily's hand and pulled her through the portrait hole. As they passed, Lily heard the Fat Lady sigh resignedly.

"The students just get ruder and ruder every year," the centuries-old woman breathed melodramatically. "You would think they were being raised by a tribe of forest trolls!"

Chuckling a little at the scandal in the Fat Lady's tone, Lily stepped through the portal and into what seemed like a completely different world. Almost everything in the majestic Common Room was covered in red and gold decorations, with lion symbols on the sofas and armchairs set in front of a roaring, warm fireplace. There were Wizard Chess sets already set up at cozy tables in the corner of the room, just waiting for leisurely students to sit down for a game. There were crimson-cushioned window seats on the sills of the glass-paned apertures to the outside, facing the rolling hills of Hogwarts' grounds. Already, Gryffindor students were reclining on chairs and chatting animatedly about the day's events, while first-years stared around the scarlet room in amazed wonder.

"Isn't it great?" Marlene beamed. "Honestly, I feel more at home here than I do at my actual house sometimes." She sat down on an available sofa and beckoned for Alice and Lily to join her. With Lily in the middle, she continued speaking. "So what do you think so far? How does it compare to what you had in France?"

"It's a lot different here," Lily admitted, relaxing on the suede sofa. "Beauxbatons is more like a kind of princess-palace, which is really lovely, in its own way, but this is _grand._ It feels like some kind of medieval castle, but even better."

"I wouldn't mind going to school in a palace," Alice said dreamily, resting her head back and staring at the high ceiling.

"It reminded me a bit of something out of a fairy tale," Lily went on, twirling a lock of dark red hair between her fingers and crossing her long legs over one another. She was conscious of the fact that a few students were still glancing at her curiously, interested in whatever it was that the new girl was up to now, after having established herself so well over the course of the day. "We had stables of flying horses, and we would take them out for rides on the grounds. We had servants too, as well as house-elves, and gold and crystal chandeliers in the classrooms." She grinned a bit at the expressions of wonder on the other girls' faces. "It's much different from here, so far. If you ask me, Beauxbatons over-decorated a bit."

The response to her words did not come from the girls on either side of her; instead, catching Lily off-guard, an amused, masculine voice suddenly resounded from behind them. "So you lived like _royalty_ at your old school?"

* * *

Not so far away from the commotion in the Common Room, a brooding seventeen-year-old boy was lying on his bed in a dark, empty dormitory, with the curtains drawn around him. He had been lying there by himself for at least half an hour, and he could hear the voices and laughter of the rest of the students in his house. For the first time in all of his years at Hogwarts, he had no desire to join his friends. James knew that already, on his last first day of school, he was already shirking his responsibilities as Head Boy, but he did not even care. Pulling out his wand dispassionately, he waved it a few times and sent a small shower of red sparks toward the ceiling. As the first batch cascaded toward the floor into nothingness, he conjured more sparks, this time in rainbow colors, and repeated the cycle over and over again robotically.

Hearing a group of first-year boys ascend the stairs and enter their dormitory floor, their thrilled, higher-pitched voices radiating upwards to where he lay, James recalled the amazement at Hogwarts's grandeur that he had felt on his first day of school. His mother and father had always told him stories about their school years and the thrill of youth that they had experienced, but the magnitude of those feelings had never quite resonated with him until he stood, on his first day of school at age eleven, in the Entrance Hall. He smiled a little at the memory of his very first sight of the Hogwarts castle; he and Sirius Black, already best friends after the train ride to school, had jumped off the locomotive the instant it came to a halt in Hogsmeade Station and they had stared, mouths agape, at the scene before them. He had never felt such excitement before.

"I wonder how she feels about it," James said aloud to himself, referring to Lily. "I bet it's nothing compared to that bloody French snob school she came from." He had spent the better part of his time alone trying to pit himself against Lily, but it was not working. Instead, he just got more depressed. He waved his wand vehemently and a waterfall of golden sparks soared toward the ceiling and arched toward the bed curtains, almost lighting them on fire as the dormitory door abruptly swung open.

"Prongs," he heard Sirius hiss into the room. "Prongs, I know you're in here."

James groaned silently. "No, I'm not."

He heard his best friend's footsteps cross the room to his bed and Sirius drew back the bed curtains with a swishing sound. The dormitory was still dark, save for the remnants of the gold sparks James created just moments before that were still fizzing out. He could just barely make out his best friend's somber face through the black.

"I tried talking to her," Sirius said, seating himself at the foot of James's bed. "It didn't go that well."

James sighed. "I'm not surprised. It was probably a wasted effort."

"Well, it was more like I confronted her than anything," Sirius acquiesced, shifting slightly on the bed so his feet dangled off the edge, toes barely skimming the ground. "But regardless, it didn't work out." He paused and glanced at James. "What are you going to do?"

"Dunno," James mumbled. "But I guess I have to do _something._"

"You do," Sirius said gently, swinging his long legs back and forth like a little kid. "I know you're hurt, Prongs, but you're going to have to talk to her eventually. You can't avoid her. She's in our year _and _our house. We're going to be with her until we graduate, and there's no way you can pretend she isn't there from now until June. At some point, you're both going to have to talk to each other and sort this out."

"I guess," James said unenergetically, but he knew that Sirius was right. There was no possible way that they could avoid each other all year, and perhaps it _would _be a sensible idea to try to talk to her about it… "What did she say to you when you went to talk to her?"

Sirius winced. "Well, she pretended to have no idea what I was talking about when I reminded her about France, and then Marlene and Alice decided to swoop in dramatically to rescue her."

"Figures," James rolled his eyes. With Sirius and Marlene's vivid history, he could only imagine how _that _situation turned out. It was quite characteristic of Marlene to make a scene, and he had no desire to know any more details.

"Come on, James," Sirius rose from the bed, watching his best friend's inert form. "You have to go downstairs and socialize with everyone. Everyone's wondering where the hell you are, and Remus is having the worst time down there trying to get the first-years in order without Hogwarts' newest Head Boy to give him a hand. You can't stay up here and brood forever and you know it."

With that, James realized that he could not mope forever. He figured that Remus and Peter likely had sent Sirius to come up to the dormitory to drag him downstairs, but in a way, he appreciated their concern, especially after they had dealt with his moodiness for the entire day. He cracked a smile and sat up, swinging his legs off the edge of the bed and standing up in one fluid motion. "If you insist." A part of him had every desire to remain lying in his bed and not get up until the sun came up the next day, but he realized that Sirius would never relent until he joined him in the Common Room, and his friend only had his best interests in mind.

Sirius beamed through the darkness and together they hurried down seven stories of the tower to the Gryffindor Common Room.

* * *

"Why, if it isn't Frank Longbottom!" Alice exclaimed with a teasing note in her voice. "I haven't seen you at all today, and I was starting to wonder if you hadn't dropped out of Hogwarts!"

"I'm still here," Frank grinned, crossing his arms and moving to sit down on an armchair adjacent to the sofa the girls sat on. He directed his attention away from Alice and towards the tall redhead. "So, you're Lily Evans."

"That's me," Lily said a little bashfully, bobbing her head with a small smile. Frank was admittedly quite handsome; he was tall with light brown hair combed neatly over his brow, and he had warm, chocolate colored eyes that smiled at her in the most welcoming way she had experienced all day. "I guess everyone's heard of me by now."

"You're the talk of the school," he agreed, laughing lightly. "You might as well be a Hogwarts celebrity, especially after the thing with Snape this morning."

"Does everyone know about that?" Lily made a face. "This is embarrassing."

"Well, at least you've made a name for yourself," Alice chuckled. She gave Frank a doe-eyed look out of the corner of her gaze, and Lily recognized it at once; she had seen that look on many of her girl friends' faces at Beauxbatons over the years. It was an expression of a romantic, pure infatuation. It was obvious to Lily just from her friend's countenance that she had a crush on Frank.

"So you come from princess school, don't you?" Frank asked, leaning in slightly from his seat beside the fire. He did not even seem to have noticed the look Alice gave him, and Lily saw her face falter.

"If you want to call it that," she said nonchalantly, smirking a bit. "But if it were _real _princess school, we would have had more pet unicorns, and fewer classes in Defense Against the Dark Arts." She beamed widely at the slight surprise of Frank's face. "We had two hours of Defense classes each day, practicing against the boys."

Underneath the thin layer of surprise, Frank looked genuinely interested. "It's optional here, after the first five years," he said, leaning in closer and resting his elbows on his knees. "Are you going to continue your study in it here? I'm planning on becoming an Auror and I'm taking NEWTs—Wizarding exams—" he added quickly to dispel the confusion clouding on Lily's face "in Defense, Transfiguration, Charms, and Potions."

"Stop bragging, Longbottom," Marlene scoffed at him. Alice was staring off dreamily in the other direction. "We all know you're smart, trust us."

Frank was about to respond with some kind of joking taunt when a cheer rose up through the Gryffindor Common Room. It appeared as if someone was making a dramatic entrance, at last. Lily looked up, her head craning to see who everyone was staring at. Unable to see over her peers' heads, she stood up. Marlene and Alice followed suit, curiously trying to see what the commotion was about. Lily's heart dropped when she saw who it was descending the boys' dormitory stairs. It was James Potter, and he was grinning with Sirius Black at his side, looking like brothers.

"We knew you'd show your face eventually, Head Boy!" called Benjy Fenwick, a sixth year boy.

"What, did you think I was going to hide in my dormitory all year, Fenwick?" James shouted back. Lily's heart fluttered at the sound of his voice, hearing it for the first time since she had kissed him goodbye in Cannes.

His eyes were passing over the crowd with disinterest, but it was obvious to Lily that he was looking, as casually as possible, for someone, and she had a lurking feeling that that someone was her. She sat down quickly and prayed that his eyes had not yet lit upon her. She had no idea how to go about talking to him.

"That's the Head Boy, James Potter," Marlene informed Lily. "I think you've heard about him enough tonight." She smiled and grabbed Lily's wrist. "Come on, want me to introduce you? You already talked to his best friends today, it's about time you met the ringleader, too!"

"No!" Lily had not intended for her single word of protest to come out snappishly, but it had. Marlene flinched at her vehemence.

"Well, I've never met anyone so reluctant to meet Hogwarts' most handsome, eligible seventeen-year-old bachelor," Marlene raised a single eyebrow. She turned her gaze back into James's and Sirius's direction. "They're both staring at you, look!"

Lily's head snapped up before she could stop herself, and immediately met a pair of luminous, hazel eyes behind reflective, wire-rimmed glasses. He was standing there, all of twenty-five feet away from him, arms crossed proudly with his insouciant best friend beside him. Her mouth opened slightly and she looked away as quickly as she could. She could see, out of the corner of her eye, that the boys were slowly making their way closer to her. She had absolutely nothing prepared to say, and was not about to flounder for words to say to them in front of her friends.

"I, uh…" Lily started, speaking rapidly. "I think I need to go lie down, before it gets any later, Marlene." The other, shorter redhead looked at her strangely. "I'm really tired," she continued, trying to force her voice down to a more normal tempo. "And I don't want to leave a bad impression on them. I've got to be up early tomorrow because McGonagall is having me do a placement exam before breakfast. I'll see you in the morning, okay?" She rushed away before Marlene could elicit any further explanation from her.

Lily was prepared to escape to her dormitory with little notice, until she realized that she had absolutely no choice but to pass the pair of dark-haired boys on her foray to the stairs. Her heart sinking, she kept her head down as she drew nearing to them, until she heard Sirius give a small but rather dramatic cough as she passed. She couldn't help but look up and saw him giving her the slyest smile, and her eyes flashed to James. She unwittingly slowed her pace, and she tried to conjure something to say to him. She knew she would have to, sooner or later, to clear the air with him about everything that had happened. However, she had no idea how she was going to go about it.

A delicate smirk, laced with the slightest hint of sadness around the corners of his lips, graced James's features as he met her eyes and whispered, "Hello, Lily."

When she heard him say her name, she abandoned all hopes of finding the right words to say to him. Instead, like a frightened deer, she turned around and sprinted up the girls' dormitory stairs, as the life in the Common Room roared on around her, unnoticing of her blatant horror.

Lily had just found her way to the seventh year girls' dormitory and flopped face-down on one of the beds, long limbs sprawled haphazardly when she heard footsteps hurrying rapidly up the stairs behind her. She groaned quietly, wanting to be alone.

"Lily? Lily, it's me." Alice was standing in the doorway, watching her new friend. She walked over and sat down next to the redhead. "Come on, you can tell me what's the matter."

"Nothing's the matter," Lily sat up, hugging her knees to her chest.

"I doubt it," Alice said, furrowing her brow. "It's something about the Marauders, and Marlene and I can both tell. You can tell us what it is. I promise that whatever it is, we can help you. We've known them for _years, _Lily. It's nothing we can't fix." She stroked the other girl's hair gently, like a mother. "Come on, you can tell me."

And that was when the story came out.

"I was out with my best friend in Cannes, and she was taking me out to eat at a Muggle restaurant to treat me for my last few days in France," Lily rushed. "And they came in minutes after us, and they sat at the table next to us. We got talking and everything just seemed so _nice. _We were sharing champagne and laughing, and they took us to a bar afterwards. I lost a drinking contest to James and promised to kiss him, and I wasn't going to do it. My friend and I left the bar but I ran back in and I kissed him and he gave me his address and I promised to write him, but _Alice, _I didn't and I was never going to." Lily's eyes were starting to tear up, and her speech was reduced to mere blubbering. "He really liked me, he did, and I liked him too, but if I only met him for a couple hours, I didn't think it could possibly mean anything. I thought he was a Muggle and I thought it was never going to work out."

Alice stared at her, shocked by Lily's abrupt outpouring of emotion.

"Oh, darling," Alice reached out and hugged her. "I didn't realize it was something like _this. _You should have told us earlier! We could have talked to him for you!"

"But it wouldn't have worked," Lily mumbled into Alice's shoulder. "Sirius came over and yelled at me. That's what he was confronting me about in the corridor before. He was telling me how James was upset, and it was _awful._ I tried to keep a good face at the time, but I feel so _guilty _about it."

"Don't," Alice said placatingly. "You did what you had to do. You're right, it _wouldn't _have worked out between you two. You did the right thing."

"Yeah, well," Lily sniffed. "He thought I was a Muggle too, and he was willing to go through the trouble that I didn't want."

Alice sighed. "I _promise _it will all work out. Just go up to him tomorrow and talk to him about it. He's a reasonable bloke, and I'm sure he's only surprised for now, and you two can straighten everything out."

Sniffling a little, Lily looked at Alice, like a little girl. "Are you sure?"

"I'm positive," Alice soothed, stroking her friend's hair one last time. "Marlene and I will help you fix it. But for now, don't worry about it. Everything is going to be okay, I'll make sure of it. But you need your sleep, because you have a long day ahead of you." She looked at Lily, who was still sitting up with her knees to her chest. "Are you going to be okay?"

Lily nodded.

"All right," Alice stood up. "I told Marlene I'd be back quickly. She told me it would be a bad idea to follow you and try to talk, but she's never been very good at consoling people anyway, so I figured that I'd do a better job than she would, if anyone was going to do it at all. I have to run back down and see her before she panics and comes up, too." She smiled at Lily comfortingly. "If you need anything, I'll be downstairs in the Common Room, and we'll all probably be coming up in a few minutes, anyway. If you still want to talk about it, just say the word."

"Thank you," Lily felt rather badly for, literally, crying on her new friend's shoulder, but at least the other girl had been kind about it. "I'm going to go to sleep. It's been such a long day," she sighed. "And tomorrow probably won't be any less…stressful."

"I understand," Alice bobbed her head with a wry smile. "Relax while you can, because it's only going to get wilder from here." She turned out the lights and left the room, leaving Lily alone with her thoughts, in the dark room.

* * *

Alice, Marlene, and a couple other seventh-year girls had long-since filtered into the moonlit room, their voices hushed so as not to disturb Lily, who lay in her bed with the curtains drawn around her, fully awake. She could hear snippets of Alice and Marlene's conversation, and it appeared as if Alice had already told the other girl what had happened. After a while, the voices died away, fading into the sounds of sleep and the Scottish nighttime.

As Lily lay in her bed that night, before she fell asleep, there was an ache in her heart, and after the day's events, she had never wanted to talk to her best friend so much in her entire life. Sitting up, with the bed curtains still drawn around her, she gazed into the darkness and thought of Céline, their old Beauxbatons dormitory. Loneliness struck her heart at the thought of her old friends, together without her, miles and miles away across the English Channel.

This thought caused a twinge of sadness to grow inside her, and she realized that at that very moment, Céline was whispering with all of their friends while she sat in their dormitory. She could envision her best friend, platinum-blonde hair falling about her face as her round blue eyes glittered excitedly in the candlelight, and she immediately was hit by a strong desire to cry from loneliness.

Suddenly, Lily got out of bed and tiptoed quietly to her trunk, where she pulled out a quill, some ink, and a piece of parchment. Careful not to wake anyone, she strode silently across the dormitory floor back to her bed and drew the curtains about her once more.

"_Lumos,"_ she whispered. Though it had to have been midnight, light flooded her little cell, and she dipped the quill into the inkwell and began to write.

"_Chère_ C_éline," _Lily wrote in loopy script, her quill scratching out the French words quietly against the parchment. _"You'll never believe who goes to Hogwarts."_

* * *

_A/N: I promised I'd update, didn't I? It certainly took a while =[ Words cannot begin to explain how sorry I am. College applications are going out, six AP classes are starting to wear me down, and I've had so little time even to catch a good night's sleep. On the bright side, it appears that, at least for now, I'm back in business! Lily and James are going to ACTUALLY talk in the next chapter and do more than just mope around. I hope you liked this chapter, and please review!_


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